


Words of a Sugar-Sweet Waitress

by musicaldork



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Waitress (2007), Waitress - Bareilles/Nelson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Baking, Crossover, Domestic Violence, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Minor Character Death, Musical References, Romance, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 35,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23704588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicaldork/pseuds/musicaldork
Summary: Jester’s just trying to find her happiness.A loveless marriage, an accidental pregnancy, and a particularly kind-hearted gynaecologist all serve to make it a far more complicated endeavour than she ever could've imagined.But she's ready to show them all just how goddamn happy she can be.And on her Mama, will she bake her way to it.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast, Yeza Brenatto/Nott
Comments: 182
Kudos: 134





	1. What's Inside?

Sugar, butter, flour.

Dappled sunlight filtered through the partially-closed curtains, casting the kitchen in a hazy, comfortable warmth - like spun sugar threads of molten gold, placed delicately on top of the most lovingly of executed cupcakes. Light and sweet, careless and chaotic, and most of all - fragile. Words one might use to describe a certain blue tiefling herself.  
  
She found the place homely, familiar, constant.  
Suffocating, even.  
  
But despite this, the mornings were Jester’s favourite time.

Humming the tiniest of tunes to herself, blue hands found themselves reaching towards the cupboards for the ingredients she knew she’d need, routine ingrained within her like that of a metronome’s steady pulse.

Her tail flicked out and looped around a measuring cup from a lower cabinet without looking, as easily as though she’d done it a hundred times before, and few would be surprised if she had. As easy as pie, she might quip! Or as easy as her favourite batch of blueberry cupcakes, that is.

Baking at home, just to go to her job and bake some more. Some might call it ridiculous. She would call it entirely necessary. Baking was as much a part of her as simply breathing was. When instincts took over she didn't even have to think.  
  
Led by as much heart as she had brains, the ingredients went into the bowl in their perfect amounts, eventually culminating into a beautifully workable dough. Mama would be proud.

With a soft sigh, Jester handled the dough with a deftness that only comes from repetition and practice. Calm, sunshine-drenched melancholy settled over the kitchen as it did that day, and everyday before it, for as long as she could recall.

Jester always tried to find happiness where she could; in beautiful pies, delicious fillings, and new and exciting flavours. And in the delighted groans of those whose taste-buds were graced with a hearty slice of her creations.

Recipes and ingredients - always asked, always answered. She'd tell them what was in the pie and she'd appreciate the way a hundred people from a million different walks of life could light up in so many ways eating something delicious. Yeah, it was fulfilling but even so... why did she feel so... alone?

As she wrapped the dough in plastic wrap to chill for later use, she wistfully let her mind wander to an unchangeable past and the happier days nestled between them. Traveller, what happened? If she could tell her younger self that she'd survive being alone she'd brand it on that younger girl's forehead and never let her forget it. To let her figure herself out instead of chaining herself to a man who couldn't love, and finding herself trapped in unsustainable mediocrity. What a sorry sight.

The shambling sound of her husband's rousing from the bedroom upstairs broke through the stillness of her thoughts and sent a shock of fear straight through her. She flinched despite herself, and the tranquillity of the morning was shattered. He was awake, already? 'Oh, traveller help me, I thought I'd have more time!'

Hurriedly slinging her bag over her shoulder, she fumbled out of the door as quickly as she could, wiping her immediately clammy blue hands onto her apron. 'Don't think about it - don't think about HIM, just don't.'

Don't think about the night before, the acrid burn of alcohol on his breath and the most regrettable night she'd had in a long while. Stupid, stupid, stupid! What was wrong with her, putting on that red dress that reminded her so much of her Mama when she knew full well where she'd end up in it.

Distraction. Okay, deep dish blueberry bacon pie was on the menu today! What a treat.

With her pale blue skirts swishing around her knees, she set off to work another day at Orly's Diner - a safe-haven away from the dangers of overthinking if she'd ever known it. Everything ran like clockwork in the diner that was like a second home to her. Jester could honestly run through the entire day with her eyes closed, with named greetings to boot, she swore.

A medium green tea for the towering pink-haired firbolg, a shot of espresso sweetened to all hell for the ostentatious lavender tiefling, a large milky brew for the handsome green half-orc fellow who came in every other day, and so on and so forth. The ever-moving cast of regulars to the diner was as consistent as the rest of the damn place.

Setting to work as quickly as she could, with nerves that couldn't be banished settled in the bottom of her stomach at the thought of facing her two best friends, it wasn't long before her boss peered her head in. Yasha Nydoorin. Not particularly sour like the revolving door of bosses she had had in the past, running around in helpless circles to make ends meet, but composed - reserved in a way that was at once guarded, yet disarmingly sweet.

"The pie today?"  
"Deep shit blueberry bacon!"  
"Deep shit?" she returned, quirking a dark eyebrow in response.  
"Ah, uh, dish! Sorry, Yasha!"  
"Oh, Jester..."

And with that, Yasha was gone. Well, Jester sure was in deep dish deep shit right now, wasn't she? Not about the flub, but about the situation she had been putting off. Namely, that godforsaken pregnancy test. The one that she hadn't had the nerve to even take yet.

With a hand clamped to her mouth she stumbled into the bathroom, a wave of nausea almost overcoming her at the thought. No, no, no!

It seemed like hardly a moment had passed before the door to the women's bathroom flapped open and two diner-uniform-clad women joined her side, their appearance at once reassuring and just totally overwhelming. Her two best friends, Beauregard Lionett and Veth "Nott" Brenatto were right next to her.

Like a trapped animal, Jester's violet eyes flashed around to stare everywhere but up at her friends. She just knew that she wouldn't be able to stomach the honest-to-god pitying concern shining in their eyes.

"I know exactly what you're gonna say and I know that I like, texted you guys about it last night but can we like, please not, you guys, I mean I dunno, I just-" she rambled uncomfortably, before Beau tossed an unboxed pregnancy test in her hand.

"This isn't something you can bake away into a pie, Jes, please!" Nott yowled, the shorter of the two moving to grip one of Jester's hands reassuringly despite their anxious sweat.

"It's time to pee on a stick."

"Read the instructions," she mumbled lamely, in an attempt to put off the inevitable. Neither of them had ever seen the ever-lively Jester so spaced out and despondent, and it was starting to get to them.

Obediently, Nott started to recite the instructions on the back of the box, in poorly-pronounced Spanish. "Um, se puede saber la duración de la-"

"English?" Beau prompted.

"Right! Uh, do. not. insert the test stick into your vagina!"

"Woooow! Thank you, Nott!"

The sarcasm-dripping banter between the two of them came as easily as anything and cracked a helpless smile from Jester despite herself, and the wrinkles she was gripping onto her skirt from how hard she was anchoring herself to it.

"You can do it! Just... focus on the negative!"

With a reassuring hand on her shoulder, Nott peered up at Jester.

"Hey, I thought you didn't sleep with your husband much anymore."

"I was tipsy, he was drunk, I wore that dress - you know the one, the red shimmery one with the lowcut neckline..."

"Oh, I love that dress! It's so pretty, it kinda looks like an ice-skating outfit..."

"Nott, stay on track."

"Hey, hey, you never know. What if the 'little fellas' don't swim, or nothin'! It could be totally fine, it was only one night! Just... negativenegativenegative, alright?"

Summoning every last ounce of courage she had left in her body, she marched resolutely to the stall to figure out whether or not she was absolutely and irrevocably screwed for life. Well, here goes nothing.

As she exited the bathroom stall, time seemed to move in slow motion waiting for the results to develop. The seconds seemed to drag by. Tail lashing behind her, she was just ready to rip the damn bandage off at this point. The moment Beau's timer went off, Jester felt her heart leap into her throat.

Fingers crossed and toes crossed, and if she could cross her tail she'd do that too. One line, please. Picking up the stick, it was finally the moment of truth.

...

"Shit!"


	2. The Positive

"Oh, honey, are you alright?"  
"Shhh. Shh. I'm inventing a new pie in my head," Jester ground out through gritted teeth, voice wobbling in pitch as though she were halfway to laughing and three quarters of the way to bursting into tears. 

Bracing herself against the sink, picking up the pregnancy tester she had dropped in her shock and drifting into the middle of the room, she felt as though she were a hapless observer to the outside of her own body. The out-of-body Jester spoke numbly, without much feeling at all.  
"Okay. 'I'm dreaming, and I-don't-want-his-baby' pie."  


"I don't think we can write that on the menuboard," piped up Nott, fiddling nervously with her tightly-interwoven braids, big dark eyes peering up at the frozen blue tiefling.  
"It's a pretty long pie name too. Might not fit on the board," agreed Beau, though the worried crease of her brow belied her protective witticisms.

"How about... 'This-is-a-bad-yolk-and-I-might-just-crack-up' pie, or 'Boozy-bad-decisions-have-ruined-my-life' pie, or 'I-have-been-betrayed-by-my-eggs' pie," she said, with a disturbingly light, even tone to her voice as she took a few more moments to process it. She was having a baby. She was having specifically her husband's baby. She was going to be a mother. This wasn't sinking in.

"What are you gonna put in it?' prompted Nott timidly, as though she just wanted to get Jester out of her dead-eyed, near-catatonic state by any means necessary.  
"Crack an egg, combine it with sausage and soak it in beer. Mix it in with beet red dressing, extra shortening in the crust to trap the moisture in. Forever."  
Well, if nothing else, rattling through pie ingredients helped her brain settle back into working conditions, though she still remained a little shaky. With her arrow-tipped tail curling protectively against herself, she reached out to take Beau and Nott's hands, squeezing them tightly to ground herself.

'So, I am having a baby. His baby. And oh, Traveller, I'm going to have to TELL him this.' The thought desperately bubbled up and she felt a wildly hysterical peal of laughter rise in her. She wished that she could tuck this thought away into another pie and never have to deal with it again. Fear clawed itself into the pits of her stomach and stayed there. And there it was - the bombshell had finally landed and hit. Jester.exe had totally loaded. She was gonna bring a baby into that kind of volatile environment and she was probably gonna be trapped there forever and this was her life right now. Oh god.

Her knees buckled underneath her and if not for the support of her two best friends, she probably would have crumpled onto the grimy, chilled tile of the bathroom floor.

"I'm sorry to bother you all but you've been in there a while and I really need you all to get back to work-" Yasha poked her head in through the doorway before her eyes zeroed in on the pregnancy tester clutched within Jester's white-knuckled grip. "Um. Take the time you need, but please, back to work," she mumbled with a nod of acknowledgement sent Jester's way, before disappearing back out the bathroom door.

If she'd been in a better state of mind, Jester would have surely noticed Beau's lingering stare at the door where Yasha had once stood, but as it were, she found her mind entirely preoccupied. Taking a moment to recollect herself, she shook herself off her friends' arms and got herself ready to get back to work, throwing away the tester, washing her hands and giving herself a long hard stare in the mirror. "Thank you for being there for me, but we really better get back out there," Jester said with a smile, chipper mask back in place.

"You can't always hide your feelings behind a pie and a fuckton of sugar, hon. You know, we're ALWAYS here for you, Jessie. And we are going to actually talk this out later, alright?" With surprising tenderness, Beau's dark eyes peered into her own as though she were searching for more words to say, before shaking it off. Both of her friends left the bathroom, leaving gently swinging doors in their wake.

Walking out of the bathroom, she could've jumped clean out of her skin when she heard the painfully-familiar voice of her husband boom out from behind her. "WAITRESS! What's a guy gotta do to get a piece of pie around here?"  
Bristling at his teasing tone, with an edgy undercurrent of angry accusation that made her skin crawl, she turned around and pasted on her best golden customer service smile. Not that he'd be able to tell a real smile from a fake one with her. She bitterly doubted he even knew what colour eyes she had.

"Hey, honey! What are you doing here? I thought you had work?" Trying to keep herself sounding pleasantly conversational, she was sure that her tail was frantically lashing behind her, exposing her nervousness to the world despite her best efforts. Keeping a secret from him was never any good, but telling him could be even worse. And certainly not right now. She wasn't ready, she was in public - what if he guessed? What if he smelt the fear radiating off her in waves? Oh, please, no.

His sloppy, relaxed aura darkened at the mention of his job. "The foreman's been on my ass all day. He's always had it out for me, y'know? I was the life of the party in high school and he was voted 'Most Annoying Laugh', the dumb sonuvabitch. But hey, never mind that now. Come on, you already know my order, what are you dawdling around for, lil missy?" 

Though a stab of hot, white fury flared up within Jester at his blatant condescension, meekly she obeyed, funnelling a piece of pie on a pre-warmed plate and setting it on the table in front of him, lickety split. 'If you butter him up, and make him happy, he won't be so bad at home tonight,' she thought, worrying her lip between her teeth. '...Maybe.'

'Jester. Where is my kiss, babe?"  
"I'm working right now," she protested weakly, squeezing his shoulder softly in hopes that he would acquiesce. He never did. With a single expectant look of his, she folded like a deck of cards. With an inaudible sigh, she swooped in and planted a brief, joyless kiss on his temple.

"And how you doin' today?" he asked with a steely gaze. Jester knew full well that he wasn't asking about her wellbeing. Wordlessly, she passed him a wad of cash from her apron pocket.  
"Not bad but... not great," he said, tucking the money into his flannel after eyeing it critically for half-a-moment too long. "I don't know if it's worth you working in this here diner, really. Might just keep you at home as my lil housewife forever!" With a rumbling chuckle at the joke that only he found funny, and a loud open-mouthed chew to go with it, he continued. "And ey, Jester? I don't like those two girls you hang around with. That taller one always looks at me like I shot her dog or something."  
"Oh, Beau? Well, she's kinda like that with everybody..."

"Mmm... this pie's pretty good," he mumbled, shovelling another forkful of it into his mouth. Brightening up despite herself, Jester shone at the praise. "I-it was the last piece left; it sold so fast I really couldn't believe it!"  
"Well, don't go getting a big head over it or nothin'. Let's face it - you ain't no Sara Lee."  
Feeling like she had been doused in a bucket of ice water, the light in her eyes died out. Right, right. He thought the pie wasn't better than a box mix.  
In a voice that sounded smaller than she wished it did, feeling more vulnerable than she ever wanted to, she couldn't help but proffer, "didn't you used to say my pies were so good I could open up my own shop?"  
"Yeah, well I was just looking to get laid."

And there it was - that sharp stab of absolute fury burning up inside her again, Jester's anger only fuelled by those damned obnoxious chewing noises of his.  
'My-husband-is-a-total-jerk' chicken pot pie! Beat the total crap out of that chicken cutlet until it's unrecognisable! Pack quickly with flour, use only essential ingredients. Rub down with jerk spices and pierce holes into it to allow steam to escape swiftly from the mixture! Daydreams of suitcases, pies and swift escapes swam across her vision tauntingly.

Jester wasn't aware that she had even zoned out until she was brought crashing back down to reality by a gruff shout of her own name. "Jester? Jester. JESTER!" 

'Oh, he'll think I was ignoring him. Oh dear.'

"YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO ME. I WORK HARD! YOU WANT FOR NOTHIN' AND YOU CAN'T EVEN LISTEN TO ME?" The mounting rage in his voice almost brought immediate tears to her eyes. Instinctively, she wanted to shield her face, but she managed to stop herself from moving, frozen and rooted to the spot.

"I'll try to work on that, honey," she responded listlessly, with a near-imperceptible tremble to her words.

"Jessie." His sudden calm was almost more unnerving than the fury. Waiting with bated breath for his next couple words, her hand drifted towards her stomach without thinking about it, before she stopped herself. "Hm... Did your boobs get bigger? Looks like they grew a cup size overnight, almost."  
Ugh, really? Was he serious?  
"What? No way."

With a shrug, he tilted the rest of the crumbs on the plate back into his mouth (spilling a few on his shirt), pushed his chair back from the table and stood up suddenly. "Well, I am outta here. And oi, did ya tell your friends about THIS new bad boy?"  
Pulling down the collar of his shirt, he revealed a large tattoo of his own name upon his chest. "It's in a medieval font. Don't get too close!" And with that 'special' reveal, he spun around and jauntily made his way out of the diner.

The moment she thought he was out of earshot, Beau didn't waste a minute pouncing on that source of easy mockery. "Wooooow, that must be helpful. Just in case he forgets who he is! Now, I've seen some dumb tattoos in my time, but that just might take the cake."  
Beau's joke and Nott's resulting cackle broke apart the building tension in the room, as Jester let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "Haha, right," Jester agreed tiredly, honestly feeling drained as hell after that soul-crushing encounter.

Well, when everything gets to be too much, there's only one thing that she can always turn to, and that is baking. And so bake, she did.


	3. What Baking Can Do

Baking was her solace and her home, and in it she found her salvation.

And what went blue hand in red with baking - and the comfort it brought Jester - were undoubtedly the memories of her mother.  
Big, brown eyes framed by dark lashes blinked lovingly down at her and soft red hands guided the rolling pin clasped in the grip of her younger self over the delicate buttery layers of a homemade puff pastry.  
The oh-so-familiar scent of her Mama's delicate floral perfume came back to her even now, so many years later. Home wasn't the house she was raised in, home was being cradled in the arms of her Mama, her long red fingers carding gently through her short blue hair as she was rocked into the welcoming arms of slumber. 

Few could say that they'd ever met a woman more enchanting - if meeker - than Marion Lavorre. But unfortunately for her, she radiated a vulnerability that drew men that would take advantage of her to her like a super-powered magnet.

Though she is loathe to admit it, that's exactly why Jester learned how to hide and deny her pain behind a sunny, cheerful exterior. If they don't look too close they'll have less to leverage against you, right?  
Every fracture she viewed in her mom - chipped in by yet another manipulative soul - was another brick in place for herself.  
And look where that ended her up - in the same damn situation. She found herself pathetic sometimes - honestly more often than not.

Though she hid away when it happened, Jester knew the fullest extent of what her mother went through to support the two of them. How could she not? All the shouting and the mistreatment, and the errant, sickly purplish bruises that bloomed like unwanted flowers over her mother's skin every other week that she put up with. The stench of stale beer and cigarettes strewn over the couch, that never quite left her nostrils. All of it was just so much. And with Jester and her husband, the cycle continues.  
'Every door we ever baked... we never once walked out, Mama,' Jester couldn't help but think hopelessly, dusting flour over the kitchen counter top.

She knew full well that her mother took the brunt of the beatings for her sake. As long as her mom was there to protect her, Jester knew that it'd never be her - and that was almost worse sometimes. The guilt never really faded. Whether hovering in the background like some sort of insidious shadow, or jumping to the forefront on those dark sleepless nights where the memories were really bad, it was still there. But you learn to manage it, and you learn to live in spite of it.

Sometimes, she couldn't help but feel that her mother could have made so much more of herself if life had dealt her even slightly better cards. Was she the chain that shackled her dear Mama to her fate? She tries not to think about it too hard. Sometimes the 'what ifs' are far more painful to ponder than anything they're worth.

Just one more conversation with her mom, she just wanted one. To ask her something Jester had never gotten the chance to ask her about - her husband.  
"I don't know if you're listening, but if you are. Please. What would you want me to do?" Her mumbled prayer went as unanswered as they always would be.

With a deep inhale, she banished the thoughts of her mom from her mind for now.  
Beating the rectangle of chilled dough out with a heavy rolling pin, she took out her stopped-up frustration on the dough as opposed to the alternative, which was her husband's good-for-nothing face. As tempting an idea as it was.

Okay. Deep breath. She could be resourceful! Life was just another pie, and she had the improvised ingredients to make it work, right?  
Well, if only. If only life were like a pie. She knew how to wrangle dough and batter galore, but this would be her greatest challenge yet.

Lemon pie. She could turn a sour mood and the whole truckload of doubts she had, and turn them into something sweet. A fruity lemon curd - complimented with a rich custard perhaps? Topped with clouds of fluffy whipped cream; garnished, with lemon wedges. Her hands worked in perfect tandem with her brain, but it was her heart that had never led her wrong with her sugar-dusted magic touch.  
Never mind the anguish that went into it; with sugar, butter and flour anything could be delectable if she twisted it just so.

Holding her secrets close to her chest, Jester knew that she could let them out into her craft this way, without fearing for her life and her safety. Vulnerability is dangerous - and she'd been burned badly before. But at least with this she had a brief reprieve - just the faintest of rainbows after being drenched in the eye of the storm.

Sure, she was stuck in one hell of a messy situation right now, but nobody needed to know that! Things would carry on the way they were. She couldn't quite decide if this sounded like a blessing or an absolute living nightmare.

"I can fix this!"  
Her pleasantly lilting voice echoed out determinedly to nobody but herself and the empty kitchen. Nary a flaw was seen on the pie she was working on - she sure wasn't talking fixing about the pie, that was for sure.  
"I am SOOO happy right now!" she declared triumphantly, to convince herself most of all. "Don't you see how goddamn happy I am right now?!"

Baking her problems into a pie made them someone else's problem for a little while. She'd get her feelings out of her system, and others would get to enjoy her near-perpetual stream of freshly baked goods. A temporary win-win situation to be sure.  
A lovely, sweet escape for a few moments was just enough to retain her sanity.

"Well, let's see the next amazing thing baking does now."  
With a blast of heat from the preheated oven door cracking open, she popped the pie in the oven. With a cheery wave goodbye to the pie, she slumped contentedly against the cool metal island, happy enough for now.

\---

It was the end of the diner day and the 'later' talk had now arrived.  
Pushing three diner stools closer together, the three of them perched together and thought together. A moment of living silence buzzed between them, swatted away when Beau opened her mouth to speak.

"Alright, Jester. Life is a shitshow in many shades - we all know this. My left boob is so much lower than my right, I'm lucky I don't trip over it. Nott here has never had a boyfriend, and she eats TV dinners alone in her apartment every day of the week."  
"I haven't cooked an edible meal in years. I've forgotten the taste of anything that isn't wrapped in tinfoil," Nott added with mock solemnity, hoping to coax a smile out of the tense-looking blue tiefling. "I have chicken kiev on Mondays, veal picatta on Tuesda-"  
"What she's trying to say is that despite all that, we still wouldn't rather be you."  
"No, we sure wouldn't."

The targeted words were well-meant, but stung like lemon juice on a wound. "Everybody has problems they're dealing with. I'll be fine, you guys don't have to worry about me, alright?"

The same insincere reassurances Jester had always used to allay the worries of others for herself came up just as easily as they always did - but left a bitter taste on her tongue in their wake. The brisk but light cadence of her voice would likely dispel the fears of just about anybody other than the two people who knew her best.  
As it were, she knew she couldn't squirm out of this one quite so easily. The two knowing gazes fixed upon her at her words only served to make her feel antsy as hell.

"And well, I couldn't leave him if I tried. I haven't got any money, or another place to stay, or really any plans beyond any of this. Let alone enough of everything for... two."  
Her small hand drifted yet again to her stomach, and this time she let it.

"...You don't need to hold yourself to the promises you made when you were too young to know any better. And you know that Nott and I would chip in and let you stay with us for as long as you needed to get on your feet, right?"  
"I have never met a person more deserving of a brand new start than you in my life, Jessie," Nott continued, with a sweet genuinity that made Jester's enforced walls buckle inward, just a little.

Although both were a tad shy, and a little clunky in their delivery, Jester felt the warm glow of gratitude wash over her at their words. Leaning into Beau's shoulder slightly, she reached over to Nott and gave her hand a quick squeeze.

Burying her face in the blue uniform-clad shoulder of her best friend and feeling Nott do the same on her other side, the three of them just sat together and simply basked in the moment - a tableau of easy, uncomplicated closeness. She let the moment hover and settle wordlessly, as sweet and soft as a cloud of powdered sugar dissipating into the air. Plain and gentle and uncomplicated, Jester couldn't help but wonder if this was what love meant to her.

And as soon as the moment was there, it was gone. With another huff that was inexplicably a laugh and a sigh all at once, Jester broke away from them gently.  
"I couldn't ask that of you guys, and I know that that wouldn't work out properly, what with Tori, or the size of your place, Nott, but really. Thank you so much."

And for the first time in a good long while, she went home happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Every time I say that Jester (or anybody else for that matter) is humming (usually when she's baking) or hearing music, it's the Waitress song that that part of the story is based off of! Ooh, meta.  
> If you haven't listened to the Waitress soundtrack, what are you doing? It goes perfectly with this fic, like a slice of cake and coffee. :)


	4. Widogast Pie

Sitting perched stiffly on the edge of her chair in a waiting room at the gynaecologist, surrounded by what felt like multitudes of happy couples, Jester couldn't name a single time where she'd felt more out of place than now.

When she was younger, the optimist in her had been deeply enamoured by trashy romance novels and the kind of cotton candy fluff Hallmark movies you could gag on. Love seemed simple and easy and magical. She'd swoon dramatically into the incredibly-muscled arms of a duke-slash-sailor-slash-prince or whatever, and be carried off into the sunset for her own happily ever after. Not.  
Now she felt like reality was playing a cruel joke on her.

Sitting next to a gaggle of delighted ladies - clearly far further along in term than she - and their partners, they started their entirely well-intentioned but really quite unwelcomed probe at her.  
Though pretty shameless at the best of times, the memory of her husband's hands all over her made her body burn in a bad way. Like she wanted to physically scrub the remnants of his touch all over her off of her own body. Well, no take backsies here, obviously.

Jester kind of wanted to tuck her tail between her legs and run. And she kind of wanted to sink back so deeply into her chair that she melted into it and disappeared - living out the rest of her life out as a piece of furniture.  
Instead, she returned their unnervingly familiar small talk with as much smiley energy as she could muster, putting on the glowing face of someone who was 'super! excited! and totally ready! to have a baby.'

How were the early-stage pains for her right now? Had she heard about this brand of formula that was especially created with baby tieflings in mind? She should make sure to enjoy her sleep while she could. She wouldn't get it again for a while! Ha, ha, ha!

Oh boy.

With a few well-timed hums of agreement and sounds of mild outrage, she felt like she had fared quite well through that social battle. She'd probably be more cut out for actual physical combat instead, to be honest.

Snapping her head up more sharply than she intended at the sound of her name, ("The doctor will see you now, Mrs. Lavorre!") she departed from the waiting room combat with a brief nod and a fanged grin, standing up and walking quickly to the door she was guided towards.

\---

Pie in lap and situated in a light blue medical gown, Jester waited patiently for the familiar, fuzzy face of her usual gynaecologist to appear. Dr. Nila was a gentle, brown-haired firbolg woman, who was as sweet as her taste in pie.

Instead of the gentle feminine voice she had been expecting, an unfamiliar Zemnian-accented voice drifted into the room behind her in its place. Moments later, the rest of the man followed suit, walking briskly into the room and squinting at a scrawl of messy chicken scratch on the file in his hand. In a lazily detached way in the back of Jester's mind, some embarrassing part of her brain couldn't help but note that he was really quite handsome. With long auburn locks swept back into a short ponytail, the most unfairly blue eyes that she had ever had the privilege of meeting and a really cute stubbly cleft chin on top of it all, he was objectively quite good-looking. He'd really be quite the looker with a real smile, she was sure. He seemed like he'd have some really cute dimples. Some little tug in the yearning cavern of her chest suggested that perhaps she'd like to be the one to bring that smile to the surface. She shook the thoughts out of her head, scolding herself lightly. This was her doctor! Don't be a weirdo, Jester. "Mrs. Lavone, is it? Good afternoon-"

"Lavorre. And um, sorry I think... I mean, where is Dr. Nila? Am- am I in the wrong room?" The words spilled out of her regretfully before she could stop them, and shape them into something more polite. She felt her cheeks burn with a heated indigo flush as she averted her eyes at her uninvited thoughts.

"Oh, um. I understand that you were expecting her instead. Currently, Dr. Nila is not seeing any patients. She's semi-retired. Long story. Um, not that long of a story actually but, I... am your new doctor! It is nice to meet you, Mrs. Lavone-"  
"Lavorre," she chimed in patiently.  
"I am Dr. Widogast, the junior doctor on staff currently in place of Dr. Nila. I am currently new in town and I have just been so impressed with the hospitality I've been shown by everybody I've met so far. I moved here from the Zemni Fields two weeks ago - are you bored yet?"  
"Yes- I mean, no-"

He didn't quite flash a smile, but his eyes crinkled at the corners with a hint of mirth that made her stomach clench in a funny way. Was she really that uncomfortable with him right now? Or was this a 'her' thing? It was totally a her thing, wasn't it?

"Sorry. What I am trying to say is, if you are not comfortable with me being your doctor, that's fine. I understand, and my feelings will not be hurt. If you would prefer, we can help you find another gynaecologist in the area-" At once careful yet awkwardly genuine, Jester relaxed a little.

"No, you're alright, it's alright I just wasn't expecting you but I can try to get used to it. But... I brought Dr. Nila's favourite pie and everything," Jester offered haplessly, gently picking up the foil pie dish, with a crust piled high with coconut, marshmallows and pastel pastry cream. "Marshmallow-Mermaid pie..."

“My sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding. So, what seems to be the problem - your reason for your visit today?”  
“Well, I seem to be… pregnant.”  
Her admission was accompanied with some half-hearted jazz hands, and a wave of embarrassment hitting her like a brick wall immediately afterwards. She was acting like an awkward child with a schoolyard crush. Get it together, Jester, she urged herself.

“Oh! Good for you, congratulations!” Dr. Widogast said happily, with a polite nod.

All at once, regret rose up in Jester’s throat and almost choked her.  
“I don’t want this baby-

“Well, we don’t provide that service here, but we can refer you to some alternative options for-”

“Oh no, I am- I’m keeping the baby. Not that I judge- I just… I’m-”

Digging her short nails so hard into her palms that they left crescent moon shapes, Jester drew in a long breath and recollected herself and her thoughts.  
“I'm having the baby but it’s just not the same kind of happy occasion like I’m sure you're usually used to seeing here. So maybe some sensitivity about it and just not making such a big deal about it, would be nice and really appreciated, I'm sorry."  
The more she continued the more her voice shrunk, until it was the barest of whispers. Staring at her lap and heart hammering with nerves in her chest, she tried hard to look up and meet the doctor's eyes, but she couldn't quite manage it.

"I... I see. I understand." If he was at all unnerved by this, he didn't show it, and she was thankful for that. Even an ounce of open pity in those eyes and she probably would have crumpled into tears. Not the look she's going for. "Not... a... party..." he jotted down onto a piece of paper. A startled huff of laughter at his clinical cadence escaped her despite herself. He was just so awkward, but it was endearing in its own right. And hey, wasn't she acting the same way?

When she finally tore her eyes away from the pie and looked up at him, her violet eyes met his for a half-step longer than expected and oh Traveller - it sent actual shockwaves down her spine. The beat of heat and silence was interrupted by Nurse Keg's noisy arrival with her blood test results.

Inspecting the results for a brief moment, Dr. Widogast gives her a long, undecipherable look. "Uncongratulations, Ms. Lavorre. You're definitely pregnant."  
"Well, unthank you."  
"Please do let me know if you have any questions or concerns with anything, like regarding diet, exercise, sex, et cetera.  
"I don't really do much of either, so."

Jester watched curiously as a pink flush travelled up his neck, across his cheeks and all the way to his ears. A traitorous voice in the back of her head whispers its wondering to her, how far the blush travels down. In a voice several octaves higher than before he squeaks out, "okay! Here's your prescription for your prenatal vitami- oop!"

His gangly limbs awkwardly flounder in the air to try and catch the note that has slipped his grasp, before finally pinning it down; a high, unintentional noise of embarrassment catches in the back of his throat.

"Here you go. See you again in 3 weeks. Anything else you'd like to know?"  
"Yes, how... how pregnant am I?"

There's a long pause, as he ponders on how to answer this.

".../very/. I mean, I think there's really only one degree of pregnancy-"  
"Ah, no, I mean, how long far along am I? How long until I start to show?" A little bit of distress crawls into her voice. She still hasn't told her husband - she needs to tell him - HOW in god's name is she going to tell him?

"If you're worried, I think pregnancy is a very beautiful and natural thing to happen to a woman's body and-"  
Seeing the deeply furrowed brow on Jester's face, the red-haired doctor immediately clams up. "And yes, I will shut up now. I'd say that you still have another month or so before it starts to become visible."

"Okay, thank you, Doctor. And hey? I'm gonna give you this pie."  
"Actually, I am off sugar - have been for a while. It causes Leptin resistance, chromium deficiency, unnecessary fatigue and so many more problems. I haven't had a piece of pie in years."  
"Really? My Mama always used to say that you could live to 100 if you gave up all the things that made you wanna live to 100. ... Life's hard enough as it is, Dr. Widogast."

She fixes him with a transfixing, bone-weary look that means more than he possibly understands and it makes him WANT to understand her. She strikes him down and makes him feel the most seen he's ever felt. And with that, Jester sets the pie tray down and leaves him standing alone in his office.

\---

Caleb tries so hard to resist it.

He walks straight out the door into another room, presses his palms tightly to the sides of his crisply-ironed slacks...

...And then sprints over to the desolate pie - just SITTING there in the centre of the room like some post-modern confectionery masterpiece - almost tripping over his feet like an absolute bona fide fool in his haste to get to it.

The sugary-sweet siren call is simply too much for him to bear.

One moment he thinks that 'just a whiff of it won't hurt...' and the next thing he knows he's got one leg slung up over his examination chair in his hurry, rapidly scrambling in his instrument drawer to find something to get this pie into his mouth as quickly as he possibly can. He feels like a man possessed.

The very moment the cream touches Caleb's taste-buds, time freezes, and so does he. He's... stupefied. And it's not just the sugar rush talking.

Caleb isn't sure he's ever had anything that tasted as good as this in his entire life. Scratch that - he surely hasn't. Caleb knows that he's never really been one for metaphors or flowery descriptors but in all honesty, he hears music - a gentle lulling berceuse that he can't quite place, but makes him feel like he's found home all over again.

And although he can't find the words to describe it, as he slowly lowers the still-full pie tray onto his lap, an uncontrollable smile starts to pull the corners of his lips upwards; the grin on his face is worth its weight in volumes of poetry.

Wow. Was everything in his life culminating in this meeting with a disarmingly charming blue tiefling woman with an indescribable depth of sadness in her eyes, who bakes like an goddamn angel who turns stardust into pies? What in god's name is this?

...She's all he can think about as he scoops pie into his eagerly-awaiting mouth.


	5. When He Sees Me

"I AM SO SORRY!!!"  
Nott's wail tore through the thankfully still-empty diner as she scrambled up onto one of the counter stools, passionately wielding her two deadly weapons of choice: a ketchup and a mustard bottle, respectively.

Tossing the half-empty bottles onto the counter, she leaps like that of a strangely graceless flying squirrel onto the back of Yasha, who doesn't even blink at the sudden thump of minor weight on her back. In contrast, Nott has winded herself on her muscular back. "God, you're built like a brick, Yasha! I always forget this!"

As funny as Nott was and always would be, genuine anxiety always laced its way into her melodramatic jests in one way or another. Leaping down from Yasha with a small squeal, she fumbled but caught herself on another chair.  
Fidgeting her fingers nervously together she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet quickly. Sure and all, she wasn't a kleptomaniac anymore; she'd out-trained that habit (mostly). But sometimes she still itched to steal a penny or two or ten. Her fidgets were as much a part of her as her booming voice or her love of order. And at this point, she was so nervous she probably wouldn't stop unless she was glued down.

"I am so, sorry. Yesterday, we had ketchup and mustard bottles out there that were HALF-FULL. Do you know what that means? I could have totally tanked business yesterday! 'Cause everybody knows that-"

"The fuller the condiments, the fuller the experience," the three women around her chanted in unison, having heard the phrase from her enough times to know exactly where she was going with this.

"I'll make sure it never happens again on my watch," she promises, with fingers and toes and eyes crossed, knowing full well that she was probably gonna forget it at some point in the near future and pull a stunt like this yet again.

"For the first time in 10 years, I will sleep peacefully knowing that those. condiment. bottles. are full to the brim. Hallelu, and amen to that!" Yasha projected her unusually booming voice towards the ceiling dryly, with large hands clasped together in faux-prayer. In spite of herself, a small smile threatened to overtake the corners of her lips alongside the acerbic bite of her retort.

  
"Yasha's feeling playful this morning," Jester observed, nudging Beau. "Any idea what that's about?"  
"No, well, uh-"

"GUYSGUYSGUYSGUYSGUYS- GUYS- OKAY, OKAY, I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING-" Nott breaks in with an even-more-panicked screech than usual, her twitchy vocal inflections immediately catching the attention of a huddled Beau and Jester. "What is it, Nott? Are you okay, you're sweatin' bullets-"

"I SIGNED UP FOR A DATING APP YESTERDAY NIGHT."

"What!?"

"My username is... get this - NottUrAverageVeth!"

Her words were met with radio silence.

"Ahh... too cheesy?"

"No, no, no, it's perfect, Nott!"

"It took me like, 3 hours to write my bio. There's just not enough space in the box to create a compelling but well-rounded summation of everything that you are and stand for, alright?"

"How about you run it by us?" Beau suggested patiently.

"Okay! ...Here we go. Ecstatically alive, enthusiastically Dwendalian, I am a woman of many deep passions, such as the collection of turtles and rare, vintage buttons. Avid fan of the history channel. I have played Betsy Ross in 33 Revolutionary War reenactments," she reads out from a stack of way-too-many flashcards, overemphasising every syllable shakily in her recitation.

"Well, you sure will stand apart from the crowd, that's for sure," says Jester, fondness leaking into her voice as she gives Nott a quick, comforting squeeze.

"I mean, this seemed like a good idea yesterday but do you think this is a mistake? I think this is a mistake..."  
Beau and Jester shared a rueful look before returning their attention to Nott. "Nott, this is your one and only life! You gotta give it a shot, if only just to see, y'know?

"I know! I just- I'm usually one for sticking to the formula. I don't LIKE guessing, or surprises, or just... NOT KNOWING THINGS! If I collect enough facts I will be able to make a fair hypothesis supported by evidence. Any blind date is just uncontrollable variable after uncontrollable variable! I'm not sure if I'm cut out for that... What if he talks too much, or asks way too many questions before it's socially acceptable to ask questions, or he could have no personal bubble, have bad breath, eat Oreo cookies before the cream filling or god forbid, he could call the waiter by his first name like some kind of absolute NUT!"

Contrary to her words, she raced over to the cookie jar and crammed an entire Oreo in her mouth out of nervous habit.

Jester was totally overwhelmed with all the suggestions she was firing out. Oh god, she had to stop this before her smaller friend had a pre-date, stress-induced aneurysm.

"I wanna stick inside my shell. Turtles do it for a REASON, okay? Just ask Orly! I don't think there's anything wrong with being careful - I mean, I could end up a miserable wife- oh. Sorry, girls!" she squeals, clamping her hands over her lips, realising how foot-in-mouth that comment was.  
With a grimace and a pat on the back, the pair nodded their understanding.

  
"But stiiiiiiiill, Nott... it's just one date, it's not like it's a proposal, right? Nott. Nott? Nott!"  
"-huh?"

"What if you have a really fun time, and you - y'know - like him a lot?"

"That's. The. Scariest. Part. I don't know, what if I like him so much and he just... doesn't like me at all. How could I live with that?"  
Seeing Nott stare down uncomfortably at her shoes, her two friends realised that they had found out the real issue there.

"...Not to backtrack too much but do I dare ask why criminal history is on the same level as Oreos and colourblindness?" interjected Beau curiously.

"Well, obviously if I ever got in a car with him, he'd probably crash at the traffic lights! Or he might put ketchup on my hot dog instead of mustard. And that is unforgivable in the eyes of every god on the planet, alright?"

Rocking herself side to side to ease her worry, Nott anxiously picks up a condiment bottle and starts to pump mustard into the red squeezy-bottle without looking, before being gently shifted over to the next dispenser over - being actual ketchup - by Beau.

"N-not to dismiss the rest of your worries about this but I don't think you're seriously worried about Oreos or colourblindness, really," Jester said gently. "I think the actual thing on your mind is that you're scared... that he's just not going to like you. But you are so, so lovable, Nott. And if he doesn't see that... well, fuck him! He doesn't deserve you. Beau and I always have your back."

"And if he tries anything funny, I'm fully prepared to launch his ass into fuckin' space, at your word," Beau chips in, only half-jokingly.

"I know you guys are right. I gotta put my game face on and just think of it like... a really elaborate war reenactment! The role I'm playing is me, and the date I'm going on is the war. But if he opens up a door in me that I can't close afterwards, and breaks my heart, it's on you two to comfort me, alright? And I'll need about 20 of your pies to get myself through it, Jester."

A tiny sliver of hope creeps into Nott's voice as she finally stills her fidgeting to clasp her hands tightly together, held up to her bosom.  
"But maybe - just maybe - I'll meet someone who when he sees me... wants to again!"  
A delighted squeal escapes her at the thought and she tackles Beau and Jester in what would surely be a bowling-pin-strike style hug if she were even a little bit more physically formidable of a person.  
Beau and Jester's relationship-weary eyes meet again over the hug, before snuggling in and basking in all the sunshine of Nott's sweet hope and earnest inexperience.

"Now that this momentary calamity has been settled, Nott and I have a gift to give you, Jester."  
As Beau elbows her smaller companion lightly, you see Nott's face light up with recognition. "Aw, jeez, yeah, I nearly forgot! Here, wait a minute!" She rushes behind the counter, rustles in her bag for a few seconds, and emerges victoriously with a... book?

"We did a lot of research on what baby books were the best ones and we saw this one, look, it's got a place where you can write letters for your baby!"  
"Oh, well... thank you," Jester says lightly, the line of her mouth settling into a tight smile.  
"We know that you didn't initially have a... strong happiness about this baby, but she IS coming anyways."  
"Hey, we don't know that they're a girl. They could be... an alien?"

Before either of her friends can speak up, they're interrupted by the sigh of one long-suffering Yasha.

"Okay, okay, you three are all very sweet and all but would you PLEASE get back to prep? Come on, it's only about 20 minutes before opening and we are already behind."  
Grateful for the baby distraction, Jester tucks the book into her rucksack (to hide on her shelf later, probably) and eagerly sets herself to work.  
And with that, the ordinary bustle of the day kicks off, blissfully leaving Jester without the room to think too hard about what was going wrong in her life.

Just another day, and another cup of coffee to pour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm autistic and I relate to Dawn a lot in that way so basically this chapter and song says "Scared-Of-Love-Anxious-Autistic" Rights lmao  
> I tried to make a fun meld of Nott personality and Dawn personality and honestly this chapter was really fun to write even tho i kinda went a bit off the rails w/ the bants haha ^^  
> (yasha and nott are somehow good friends in this fic - dont ask how, it just happened)
> 
> also YOOOO i hit 200 hits, 20+ comments and almost 30 kudos! i know its a tiny number in comparison to most writers but... im really seriously happy. any engagement w/ my work just totally makes my day! thank u all very much ilysm


	6. Orly's Diner

With every new day that dawns, nothing really changes for Jester.

Half of her is glad for the lack of eventfulness, as it means that she's made it through yet another day and night in one piece.

Contrarily, a long-since-stifled part of her whispers its desire for mischief and chaos in her ear at times where she doesn't keep herself preoccupied enough.  
That part of her was hidden for safety.

Despite what some might think, Jester is not - and never has been - a fool. Occasionally lackadaisical - with an acquired taste for the sillier things in life - but never stupid. Engaging with pranks, mischief and her own sense of humour under the same roof as her husband... it didn't bear thinking about the consequences to that.

Hustling through her everyday duties of baking, pouring coffee and handling customers on her cookie cutter day, she sought a brief reprieve where one would hardly expect her to find it.

Fuelled by a rare burst of genuine cheer as she recognised him, Jester strode on over to serve the familiar tortle seated at his same-old, ever-reserved seat.  
"Aw, hi, Orly! It's nice to see you dropping by. How are you?"  
"Fine, fine, same as always.... It's too damn warm in here. Turn the AC up!" he grumbled, though a small, lopsided quirk of a smile softened the sternness set into the wrinkles of his face from what one could only imagine was decades upon decades of malcontent.

This was Orly Skiffback himself - the owner of his namesake diner. The man was an ancient, grizzled tortle with a mean old squint and a molasses-slow and sticky drawl to match.  
And as crabby and demanding as a customer as he made, she couldn't hide the fact that she was honestly very fond of the old geezer, though for reasons one could really only guess at. Jester would hazard a guess that the unlikely feeling of companionship was mutual, if the warm, amused glimmer in his eye for her was anything to go by.

Jester honestly considered coaxing a rare gem of a smile out of a frowny people as one of her absolute favourite activities, second only to her obvious life's dedication to baking. Against her better judgement, her brain pulls up a mental image of Dr. Widogast, and what he might look like with a big, honest smile on his face.

Shaking the thoughts off, Jester tunes back into the noise of the half-empty diner just in time to hear Orly's bitter, temperature-related complaints.

"It's too warm in my gas station, my supermarket and my laundromat and I will not tolerate it bein' this damn warm in my diner too."  
"We hear you, Orly!" Jester chirps in response, pulling out a pen and notepad from her apron pocket, that she admittedly doesn't really need. His order is always the same, and she's always the one who takes it. The day Orly decided to shake it up would be the day hell froze over, as far as she was concerned. Anyways, what will it be today?"

"Okay listen up. Today I want the daily special, 'Betrayed-by-my-eggs' pie - wait, huh? Betrayed by my eggs...?" Orly pauses as he processes the name of the pie, before slowly cocking his head up towards the chalky white letters on the menuboard. Then his gaze shifts, his one good eye focusing on Jester in a way that made her feel like she was being sized up by some ancient omniscient being. For a minute that felt like an hour, he fixed her with an unreadable look, before relaxing. You could actively see him making the choice to let it go for now. Jester's fidgeting ceased gratefully for the pass. "And I want a tomato, on the side, on its own plate."

"That everything?"

"No. I also want orange juice but don't bring that out first, bring the water out first. Now listen to my horoscope before you go. Aquarius: smooth sailing today as Mars enters your inner circle... Whatever the hell that means. Your loved ones will be listening especially carefully today, so pay heed to what you say. Well, I don't have any loved ones. What a waste of time. Now, let's read yours."

"Ah, no, it's fine, Orly! I'm Aquarius too, see? It doesn't mean anything to me either - don't have a loved one like that, just the one I live with and... and..."  
With a deep inhale, Jester looked away from Orly as she felt a ripple of unexpected nausea rise in her throat. She willed herself to push through it, at least for just a few more moments until she could duck away undetected... please. Hopefully the fickle mistress of morning sickness would smile and grant momentary leniency upon her today. Taking a second to recompose herself, she turned back to Orly. Maybe she could brush it off as having gotten a little distracted-

"Jester. You got somethin' in your oven other than a pie? Like maybe... a bun?"  
"P-pardon me?" she yelped, tail suddenly sticking out stiffly behind her like that of a startled cat. Every ounce of her common sense flew out the window with that frankly targeted question. Reduced to stammers, Jester was NOT expecting a question as blatant as that. "Oh, Orly, shush! Please, keep quiet about it..."

One eye that glittered like polished onyx stared searchingly into hers for a moment that felt like a tense eternity, before he nodded slightly and eased his gaze away.

"Now it ain't my business to go spillin' but I gotta tell you that I know I seen that same sick look on your face only once before."  
His eyes took on a distant glaze to them as she watched him drift into the back of his recollections. "Her name was Annette. I nearly married her when I found out she was expecting, after our long, long night together. It... didn't work out though."

Looking like there was something he had left instead, Orly quietened down.  
Focus came back into his eyes and sharpened his gaze as he tucked the memory away, back where it belonged.

"Ah well. The past is in the past. So let's look at today instead. It says here...'Springfield Pie Contest'. The prize money is 20,000 gold."  
Orly carefully tore the page out and handed it to Jester.

"You'd wipe the floor with any of them, with your eyes closed even. Especially with that 'Chocolate Strawberry Oasis' pie of yours. That pie is a thing of beauty if I've ever seen it. If you entered that, you'd take home the big bucks for sure. And I bet you have an idea for what you could use that money for, huh." He fixed her with a knowing look, before sticking himself back into his paper. "Now that's enough chitchat for now. Would you get my order for me, Jester?"

The moment Jester heard the number 20,000, her jaw dropped and now SHE was the one with the starstruck expression. It couldn't be possible. Could it? Orly sure seemed to think so.  
'...But I'm not Sara Lee,' she couldn't help but think snidely to herself, souring her thoughts with what her husband had said about her pies. It was a hard insecurity to shake. Without her pies and desserts, who was Jester? An absolute nobody. Her throat stung with unshed tears at the thought, but she swallowed it down.

Although her hands were trembling, she tucked the sliver of paper into her apron pocket as if it were a piece of the most precious gold.  
Nodding wordlessly at the tortle elder, she headed off to fulfil his requests. The rest of the shift hardly even registered to Jester, for she felt as though she were floating away on a cloud of longing. She wasn't touching the ground, she was skimming it with her toes with how far up in the clouds she was.  
With 20,000 gold she'd certainly be able to get away from her lousy old husband, no doubt about it. She could run and never take a second look back if she so wanted to.

This was dangerous territory. It was dangerous because she felt a wildly unrestrained swell of hope rise up inside her.

Hope is a rare but fleeting commodity. A delicate, fragile thing.  
Jester knew all too well what complete and utter despair felt like. What if this didn't work out? The shattering of this hope would be just too painful; to cut herself open on those splintered shards would be a blow too excruciating. She doesn't want to shatter her world, but she admits that it's not much of a world as it is.

Bright, vivid colour floods into her monotonous world, shade by shade, as her brain churns pleasantly with the possibilities.

But for now - she tucks that little bubble of hope away to nurture it, because she has no other choice. Keep it hidden, keep it safe, but to keep on growing it regardless.  
Without it, what else would she even have left? If she didn't think that things could ever turn out okay, she wouldn't have a reason to go on.  
No. Giving up was not an option. Sparing a quick glance down at her stomach - thankfully not showing yet - she can't help but feel her resolve strengthen. Giving up was NOT an option. If not for her, then for the baby.

That day, with imaginary pies swimming across her mind, Jester holds her fragment of hope dearly to her chest.  
As she drifts on over to the bus station to find her way home, a bright, honest smile lights up her face.

And with it, she's radiant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the low low price of... free! you can drop a comment and make a fanfic writer smile like a giddy idiot for a whole week! :)  
> but only if you want to, of course!  
> and as always, thank you for reading! <3


	7. It Only Takes A Taste

Jester's mind was spinning out of control with pie ideas. Inspiration struck by virtue of necessity and survival. If she was going to enter and win the Springfield Pie Contest she had to bring the most perfect pie she's ever created. There couldn't be a flaw in it. And so many flavours to choose from - what could it be?

Finding herself situated on the bus ride home before she knew it, her legs swung back and forth like a child's might as she thought and thought and thought even more. She looked as though she didn't have a care in the world, but in reality the spinning gears of her brain were working overtime.

'...Jumping Without A Net' bottomless pie - pillows of the softest meringue, topped with winning ribbons of strawberry cream - no crust!  
'...Everything's Coming Up Roses' open-faced pie - delicate floral cream filling, sweetened with honey and topped with crushed, velvety rose petals.  
'...Getting Out of The Mud' mud pie - generous scoops of mocha almond ice cream, topped with bittersweet chocolate morsels- oh!  
Jester was so deeply lost in thought that she didn't even notice the tall, red-haired figure approaching her until he called her name questioningly.

"Mrs. Lavorre?"  
Crash-landing out of her mystical mind-palace of pie, she jolted at the unexpected interruption as though she'd been shot.  
"Hiya, Dr. Widogast! What are you doing here?"  
"My car wouldn't start this morning so I took the bus. I... forgot how much I love buses."

A beat of awkward pause saturated the air around them before he piped up yet again.

"Do you always take the bus?  
"Only on Tuesdays - my husband goes out drinking with the boys."  
"Oh, that's nice! ...for him."  
"I love Tuesdays," she deadpanned.

Trying to keep the conversational ball rolling, and maybe get to know the clearly-nervous man before her, she spoke up softly.  
"So... where do you live?  
"Staten Grove."  
"Oh, wow, it's real nice over there."  
"Yeah, if you like _trees!_ ...which I do?"  
Punctuating the awkward fumble with a halfhearted fist-bump, he seemed to find the nerve to finally spit out the words he had been ruminating over. "Do you mind if I sit down here?"  
"Aw, of course I don't mind! Be my guest."  
And with a dramatic, sweeping flourish, she gestures to the empty seat beside her, which he promptly settles himself into.

"So, you're a waitress, huh? Where do you work?"  
"It's just a little place off of Highway 27 - Orly's Pie Diner."  
Jester couldn't help the enthusiastic pride that leaked into her words as she continued.  
"We serve 27 different varieties of pie! I make all the pies fresh. Breakfast pies, lunch pies, and a special new pie I invent that day!"

"...did you make that marshmallow pie?  
"Yeah, I sure did! I invented it with my Mama when I was... I don't know, 6 or 7 maybe."  
"That was THE best pie I've ever had in my entire life."

A gasp of poorly-concealed delight escaped her at his confession. A piece of her heart was baked into every pie, and maybe she was overthinking it, but the fact that he HAD ended up accepting her awkward peace offering warmed her to her very bones.  
"You tried it! ...I won't tell your doctor!" she teased, playfully swatting him on the arm. She tried to ignore how the touch made her body zing at the contact.

With a rumbling chuckle that made her stomach flip, Dr. Widogast soon fixed her with an unexpectedly serious stare. Nervousness and giddy euphoria bobbed up in her throat at the look he pinned her with, meeting his gaze expectantly.  
"Really. That pie was... _biblically_ good. Your pie could win contests and ribbons or whatever you set out to achieve with it, I swear..."  
Winning a pie contest - winning ribbons and trophies and most importantly for her: gold.

Jester felt hot tears spring up in her eyes at the sound of earnest appreciation in his voice. She tried desperate to settle her suddenly choked-sounding voice, and the thumping, racing heartbeat that came with it. That was so nice of him to say. When was the last time she'd been spoken about with that kind of admiration and... reverence?  
"Oh, what a thing to say..."  
Much to her chagrin, her voice held the distinct wobble it always did every time she felt like she was going to cry.

Caleb looked over to see Jester with a hand covering her face - with a shine of tears in her eyes - and completely panicked.

"I am SO SO sorry- I didn't mean that in a bad way- that was a compliment!"  
His sudden fluster caught her off-guard and her breath caught itself on a half-laugh at the sound of it.  
"Nononono, I know that it was! It's just really nice of you to say that! That's why it made me... um, you know, I'm not just not really used to... compliments."

With a deep swallow that made his Adam's apple jump over the collar of his starched, white collar, he nodded.  
"Right. Hm, you know what's funny? Seeing you, sitting here, all by yourself in your uniform? You remind me of a girl I once knew. Wow, by now she’s well in middle age. Probably 41 or 42..."  
"Huh. Thank you?" she responded drily, not quite sure how to take that.

"Hm? Oh my god, no no no no no, no-" Did he just accidentally call her old? He was a mess, oh, this was a disaster. Embarrassment drew a rosy pink flush to every patch of exposed skin he had.  
"She was a waitress at a shop I used to frequent quite a lot. Nice teeth and small hands - she'd smuggle me goodies I couldn't afford then. She was sweet to me. That's the reason I thought of you."

"Wow. No one's ever really noticed me that way before," she mumbled, with an airy giggle that shocked even herself. When was the last time she'd _giggled_ like that?

"Someone must have, right? Because you have the uh, whole, baby thing and all that? Uh, anyways - she'd bake the pies fresh everyday - like you, I guess! ...you remind me of her, but better." The sweetly shy admission of his in his low, enchanting voice, struck her visibly like a punch to the gut. He carried on, unaware of his blue companion's racing heart and thoughts.

"The one you baked... That pie was like Shakespeare pouring his heart out into a love-letter, it was that good. I read a lot and that pie was like... a novella, or a song, almost. Am I sounding ridiculous right now?"  
His huff of self-conscious laughter sent her heart slamming violently against the confines of her ribcage.

"No, no, I totally get it! You know, that reminds me of a thing we would say - me and my Mama, in the kitchen when we'd bake - she'd say, 'Jester, you can tell a whole story with a taste!'"  
Undercurrents of laughter and wistful nostalgia warmed the sweet, lilting cadence of her voice into honey. She shifted in ever-so-slightly closer to Dr. Widogast without thinking. His throat bobbed cutely - nervously - again in response.

"...That is exactly what I mean!" he said, eyes lighting up with having his feelings put into words. "I swear, the way those flavors mixed and melted together, it was truly unbelievable. I can only imagine what it must've felt like for you to make something so incredible - incredible's not a strong enough word for it - with your hands, Mrs. Lavorre. Just one taste and I had to inhale the whole pie."

"Just one bite... caused all that wondering?"

The question felt loaded as their eyes met, before both of them quickly turned away, blushing scarlet and plum-purple respectively. The tip of her tail tapped against her calf. His calloused fingers tapped an incomprehensible rhythm against his leg. They glanced back at each other for a moment before snapping their heads forward, as if mutually embarrassed at having been caught looking. It was perfectly ridiculous.

She craved more.

Even with the lingering awkwardness to push through, it wasn't too uncomfortable between them somehow.  
It didn't take long for them to shed their initial uneasiness, falling into conversation that came quite easily to them for the remainder of the bus ride.  
Talking to a handsome, sweet - albeit socially awkward - guy who seemed to care about her, without the need to walk on eggshells with every word she said, was just... addicting.  
She'd gotten a taste of him and she wasn't sure if she could turn back now.

Who's to say that red and blue can't go together?


	8. You Will Still Be Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really quite.. intense. It's not graphic, but it's intense. If you're really sensitive about descriptions of domestic abuse, unwanted advances + touching or similar situations, please proceed with caution.
> 
> Stay safe, y'all.

The groan of the old couch shifting beneath her sounded deafening in contrast to the overbearing silence that reached far out into the every corner of their shared abode.

The word 'their' tastes bitter on Jester's tongue. She's never been one for too much bitterness, but right now she's steeped in it - and she isn't quite sure what she can _do_ about it.  
And hell, it was HIS place she moved into, when she had nowhere else to go.  
With hindsight on her side now, if she'd known how many years of her life she'd lose in his shadow, she'd have taken the damn streets over him.

Nowhere in this place felt like home to her, aside from a small section of the kitchen, where she sought refuge in creation during the times the walls around her felt too stifling. She may have been his wife, but the feeling of encroaching on his territory never left, leaving her feeling edgy every minute she spent there.

Before she can put a leash on her thoughts, Jester looks up and sees the towering figure of her husband standing in front of her. She startles suddenly, heart leaping into her throat at the unexpected intrusion.  
"Aw, you're home so early?" She hopes she sounds pleasantly surprised by his arrival; in actuality, she feels like she might be sick. But this nausea, she's certain, has absolutely nothing to do with morning sickness.

"Hmph. Thanks to Bozo the Foreman, it looks like I'll be home a lot more now. He says I been late one too many times, and fires me! I told him, 'You can take this toolbox and shove it up your FUCKING ASS!'"  
He punctuates his yell by slamming his toolbox against the worn, matte tile of the floor, working himself back up into a fit as he furiously recalls his firing. She flinches hard at the rattling crack of it and watches him with sharp, deeply uneasy eyes as he tramps to the cabinet to grab a beer.

"Well, fuck him, I don't even want that damn job. He called me arrogant. Me? Arrogant? That asshole's been waiting to stick it to me since high school."

"I'm sorry, sweetie," Jester says as softly and mildly as she can, swallowing hard against the knot of anxiety inside her.

"DON'T feel sorry for me. I am _fine_."

A tremor of pure dread ran down Jester's spine at the forceful, aggressive sound of his voice. She had said the wrong thing.  
She wanted to run.  
Holding her breath, she waited for the explosion.

"I am _FUCKING FINE!_ I AM CELEBRATING!"  
Unexpectedly, she watched as he whooped loudly with strained, stubborn glee, swapping his beer for his old guitar and striking buzzy, mediocre chords on it. "These hands were made for guitar, not slapping on concrete or whatever the hell else they expected me to do!"

He's so keyed up - so utterly unpredictable right now, she notes detachedly, wishing she were anywhere on the planet but here right now.  
Every shout rattled against her already shaky nerves. Any wrong move, wrong word, wrong look and she'd be a dead woman tonight.

Setting down his guitar, he approached her with a greedy look in his eyes that made her feel... unclean. She wanted to scrub herself raw to get the invisible reminders of him, off of her skin - but she couldn't.  
"Well, it looks like you're gonna be paying the bills around here then. What'd you do today?" he asked flatly, settling himself against the couch and taking a swig of beer.  
Quickly, Jester shoved some of her wages into his hands before he got impatient, silently praying to whatever gods were willing to listen that he wouldn't scrutinise them too closely. It wouldn't do to get on his bad side with the foul mood that he was in.

"You gotta be shittin' me. This can't be all you earned."  
"...It was a slow day."  
"Well, you gotta move a lil faster then! Now where's my kiss?"

Jester leans over the arm of the couch and plants a short kiss on his temple. Trying to beat a hasty retreat into another room, she starts to pull away but he grips her HARD - and pulls her off-balance. She stumbles onto his lap and winces internally as he starts to feel her up clumsily, too roughly. Kissing her neck, she feels terrible as she shudders against the feel of his tongue against her skin. Mistaking it for a pleasured response, he only gets more riled up.

"No, babe, I'm sorry... I don't feel good today-"  
"You feel fine to me! Come on baby, kiss my bad day away!"

There is nothing she'd rather do less.

Her brain runs in frantic circles trying to beat an understandable retreat in anyway that she can. Her voice raises an octave or two in overly-cheerful panic as she gabbles out the first suggestion that comes to her, getting off of him and rushing over to grab a small dish to plate up with.

"Why don't I get you a bite to eat! I brought chicken pot pie leftovers from work-"

The silence is deafening.

"...you think I don't see what you're trying to do here? You think I'm stupid?"  
"No! No, I just thought... you had a hard day, you deserve something warm to eat-" she fumbles tearfully, trying to sound upbeat and genuine in her intentions when she's anything but.

The air around her gets colder - she can feel it. It's because of him. She can't even bear to look at him, finding something particularly interesting on her shoes as she stares downwards, starting to quake helplessly.  
The danger levels are rising as his voice begins to build in anger.

" **I'M NOT** _ **FUCKING**_ **HUNGRY!** "

And there's the explosion.

The dish in her hands is grabbed out of her fear-loosened grasp as he lifts it high and smashes it against the floor.  
It shatters into porcelain shards and dust; Jester feels like she might be joining it in its place real soon.

"Please calm down-"

"I'LL SHOW YOU CALM!"

He grabs her arm in a painful vice grip and twists it behind her back, before shoving her across the room. He's so much taller and broader than him. If he wanted to, he could break her in two.

_**NOTAGAINNOTAGAINNOTAGAINNOTAGAIN-** _

Stumbling backwards and crashing to the floor as he stalks ever closer to give her what for, Jester's mind goes entirely blank, body working on instinct alone.

She makes herself as small as possible as she curls up reflexively, one hand on her stomach and the other over her head, fumbling away - anything, ANYTHING to get away from him, please, god-

Stumbling backwards, Jester can't control the guttural scream escapes from her mouth before her brain has the mind to catch up to it.  
"I'M _PREGNANT!"_ she screams out and now she's sobbing, and she's never been more terrified in her life. She feels like she's dying. She's a hair's breadth away from having a full-blown panic attack but knows she can't do that in front of him.  
Air raid sirens pound against her temples, screaming at her that she's not safe.  
To keep her alive in the only way it knows how, her brain starts to compartmentalise her panic.

Jester welcomes the numbness of dissociation that washes over her, tear-reddened eyes turning glassy and faraway.  
She barely notices that her husband has frozen in shock, and she doesn't feel it as he guides her delicately to the couch like a piece of porcelain.  
She knows how porcelain winds up with him sooner or later. She's always known that gentle touches don't last forever.

"Wipe away your tears, babe, I'm sorry, I didn't wanna hurt you or nothin'. But girl, you really try me sometimes."  
The fond exasperation in his voice makes her want to break down.  
But instead, she just nods weakly.

Pulling her into his arms with a painfully conditional tenderness, he starts to fondly reminisce on their youth, hands stroking her stomach possessively. She wants to get his damn hands off her _fucking baby,_ and the ferocity of that sentiment shocks even her.  
Face pressed against his chest, Jester can only register the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke. It makes her think of when she was a little girl. She feels just as helpless as she did back then.

"Remember my clean shave? Back in our old days, we were just kids. And do you remember those love songs I used to write you? I had my guitar, you had your... something or other, whatever it was. And you liked that sad song, so I'd play it all the time. How does it go?" He hums a few melodies, strumming haphazardly. "Where the sun don't shine! No, that can't be it. When the sun won't shine! No... hey, what was it, baby?"

 _"Til the_ _sun don't shine. You will still be mine._ "

Jester sings it quietly, staring into nothing at all. Her voice sounds as small as she feels.

"That's right! Jester, baby, you're mine, you know that? But please, promise me you won't love that baby more than me. Say it - I _need_ this from you, okay? It's just you and me forever, babe, alright?"  
Staring down at her stomach, Jester watches a tear fall and soak into the apron of her uniform.

"Alright, I promise," she whispers, as he starts to sing that stupid old song again ( _"Mine, ohh, mine, mine..._ ") and distantly, she thinks it might be the worst lie she's ever told.


	9. A Soft Place to Land

"Jester? ...What's the baby book doing nestled behind the cinnamon? You can't write your baby a letter from the spice rack, you know."

Caught off guard by the probe, Jester takes back the book from Beau wordlessly, sighing as she leans down to tuck it loosely into her rucksack.

She hadn't had the heart to look through the rest of the baby book yet, let alone start writing letters to the kid.  
It kind of made it too real, didn't it?  
I mean it's not like Jester didn't WANT to be a mom, but everything about her situation was too messy for her to think about without her mind going a little haywire. This was far from the most ideal situation to have a baby in. Honestly, the cheerful "perfect" mothers and babies nestled in those glossy pages were... too much for her to stand to looking at for longer than a minute or two.

She was scared to get too close too soon.

Leaning against against the kitchen island, she let out a sigh. "I don't know, Beau. Maybe I'm not the letter writing type. I don't really know how I'm feeling about the whole-"

"GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRLS, I THINK I'M HAVING A SMALL ANXIETY ATTACK!"  
Barrelling into the kitchen like in an absolute tornado, Nott's distinctive scream caught both of their attentions immediately.  
"Huh?"  
"I GOT A MESSAGE ON MY DATING PROFILE!"  
Jester gasped with genuine excitement for her small, ever-so-sweet, friend. God knows that she deserved a little romantic companionship at this point in her life, after being alone for so long.  
"Oh my GOD, you must've been sitting on this news all day! I'm so happy to hear that, Nott! Tell us all about him!"

"Okay, so his profile name is "YezAllYouNeed" - 32, has all his hair, kind smile, and get this - he's a big fan of poetry, potpourri and... puzzles!"

"Well, he's sounds perfect for you," Jester says with a grin, smile a mile wide at the delight of her friend.

And although she was still vibrating on the spot with nervous energy, the supportive chorus of 'ooh's and 'aw!'s coming from both Beau and Jester seemed to ease Nott's fears up, just a little.  
Voice cracking slightly, she wiped her anxiety-clammy hands on her apron. "And just so you all know, I'm seeing him tonight. I set up a five-minute date with him!"

"...Five minutes?" Beau and Jester asked in immediate, coincidental tandem - not wanting to rain on Nott's parade but admittedly intrigued by the curious decision nonetheless.  
"This way so if it's a disaster I can get back in time for 'History's Mysteries'!" she asserts, as if it's obvious - though to her, they're sure it is.

"Right. Okay, Nott? You are such a natural beauty. But because it's such a special occasion... Will you let me put some makeup on you? And let your braids down? Just for one night."

"Well..." With a short pause that makes it clear that she already has her answer, Nott squeals her response, giggling delightedly at the thought. "It is important to make a good first impression! Oh, and before I forgot... hey, Jester? May I ask you to make me one of your 'Meet Your Dream' chocolate cream pies, please?"

With a grin that crinkles her freckle-dusted nose, Jester gives her her most enthusiastic yes. Lord knows they could all use a little dreaming in times like these.

"I'll make you a real special one, like my Mama used to make. You'd never think that the ingredients go together, but they do!"  
Pleasant wonderment softens Jester's excited words at their edges at the memory that floods back to her, of the first time she'd seen her mother make that pie.  
She can almost feel her mother's loving tap on her nose, and the smudge of flour it had left in its wake.

"What's gonna be in it?" Nott prompts as she hoists herself up onto the steady island, wide eyes alight with eagerness as Beau starts to apply a light dusting of makeup to her features. Jester smiles, and she can tell that Beau's biting back an affectionate grin of her own in spite of herself.  
"Let's see well, I'm gonna switch the chocolate from bittersweet to creamy milk, and add just a touch of passion fruit and... a dash of exotic spices.

"Oh my god. It sounds amazing."

Humming softly as she worked, Jester set her mind to organising the ingredients for the chocolate cream pie at hand, although she and her thoughts were clearly occupied elsewhere.

"Girls...? Maybe this sounds crazy but you know what - I know I have to. And I want to tell you. You know that pie contest, up in Springfield? I'm going to save up all my money and enter, and if I win that coin... I'm going to leave him."

It feels like a fever dream just to say it out loud.  
Jester can tell that she sounds a little choked up, but the firmness of her tone holds a rising determination in it that she hasn't heard in herself for... Traveler knows how long. Honestly, she didn't know that she had it in her anymore. But there's a fire that blazes inside of her, and by god it would not be extinguished. Not if she had anything to do with it.

"Jessie. That's the first thing you've said that's made sense in a very long time."

"I'm gonna take that prize money, and I'm gonna run - far, far away from here."

A beat of woeful silence stretches out between them at the solemn thought, before Nott chimes in with an unexpectedly tender chip of wisdom.

"Jester... You can leave him without running away from all of us, and everything else here, you know? But... if you-"

Nott swallows the mournful wobble in her voice at the thought of Jester not being in her life anymore. She can't really picture it - she doesn't WANT to picture it.  
One of the ever-constant presences that kept her grounded taking off to do her own thing, with the loss of comfort and sugar and friendship following her. A blue ray of light suddenly gone. But she knows that it's not about her, and it's certainly not her place to stop her.

And if this was what Jester needed to be happy, so be it.

"If you really gotta leave, you go do it. Go open up a pie shop somewhere where they really need a pie shop. Like Xhorhas. Or- or... Whitestone!"

Letting out a relieved laugh at the soft release of tension in the room, Jester's gaze drifted down to herself for a moment. Her flour-covered, apron-clad self the same as usual, but now hiding something so, so unexpected.  
And for the first time in a long while, she allowed her mind the privilege of a dream, relishing in its softness. Right now, letting herself picture a better life than the one she was currently now inhabiting sounded... intoxicating.

Serenity glossed over Jester's relaxed features - capturing her in a rare moment of kind, unburdened bliss as she nodded. Tucking loose strands of unruly blue hair behind her ears, she whispered as though she were afraid the universe would retract its mercy if she spoke too loud.

"Hey, maybe you're right. Maybe I really could."

"You could call it... Jester's. Pie. Palace!"  
"Jester's... pastry heaven."  
"Ooh, ooh, how about: Jester's Pie-in-the-Sky?"

"I think that all sounds lovely. Now let's get started on the pie. Here, I'll guide you two through it."

\---

Standing in front of the hot pie, fresh out the oven, she allows her mind wander - just a little.

"Baking pies always makes me think of my Mama. Maybe it's odd to admit, but some days l still see her - my mother, and all of her dreams.  
She'd say, 'Nothing's impossible, child.'"

Jester had always heard that a dream needed to be believed for it to taste like the real thing.  
Sure, you can have your hopes and your dreams, and tuck them away neatly into a pie crust, but it's the belief in the matter that brings them to life.

She thinks she's ready to believe.

Before she's even aware of it, the hands of her best friend's have slipped into hers as all three women let themselves dream, connected by more than grasp.  
The nature of the elusive dream of living the life you thought you'd have. Nothing that she's ever had or known, or ever been able to hold until now.

'When your breaking point's all that you have, a dream is a soft place to land.' The words ring true in her ears.

With violet eyes, gone soft with care, Jester slowly undoes Nott's tight braids with careful blue hands. It almost feels ritualistic in a way. As soon as she finished, she started to comb her fingers through the long, dark hair as delicately as she could, just like her Mama used to do for her. Nott's dark hair tumbles down her shoulders in gentle waves, and she looks so sweet. With a mirror proferred to her, Nott's eyes widen with real surprise at her own reflection.

"Oh, look what you did - you made me almost pretty." She speaks in a reverent, almost tearful tone, peering at herself in the gleaming mirror. The makeup is so light, but she knows she's never... FELT beautiful before, but somehow - she truly almost does.  
Maybe it's something in the air, but Nott feels like maybe her 5-minute date could be the start of something good.

"Almost pretty? Nott, you're beautiful."

Under the hazy, flickering light of the diner kitchen, it feels like the three of them have stepped into some ethereal otherworld. Jester doesn't want to go back.

But as they tend to do, the moment slips out of their grasp, and the spell starts to fade.

"Well, that's me for today. Nott? Make sure you don't do anything I haven't done. And get yourself a five minute condom."  
"BEAU!"  
With a playful jostle and a wink slung carelessly over her shoulder, Beau disappears, swinging her bag jauntily by its straps as she goes.

For a minute, the quiet settles into the corners of the room comfortably, before Nott turns around to give Jester a long, honest look - taking her hand lightly in her own.

"You are the queen of kindness and goodness."

The poignancy of her belief strikes Jester in the heart like a physical blow. Smiling down at her nervous companion, she plants a small, chaste kiss to the top of her head. There doesn't have to be words, it's alright.

And with one last backward glance, Nott smiles, sniffs and walks out the swinging doors of the kitchen, pie in hand.

Jester watches her with a fond smile as she leaves. For once she's alone, but she doesn't feel lonely.  
And by herself in the kitchen she's baked in a hundred times before, Jester honestly feels her Mama all around her, in a way she's never felt before.  
Her sigh - heavy with yearning, but feather-light in spite of it - floats into the air, hovers and dissipates.

"...May we all be so lucky."


	10. Never Ever Getting Rid of Me

For Jester, the ensuing days blur together into a haze of hiding money away from her husband, in the beat-up old cushions of the couch. Sure, she still has to give him her wages but if she skims a little off the top and acts smartly enough, she's sure she can scrounge up enough to enter that pie contest.  
It's been said that conditions such as hers could turn even laymen into logicians - and she knows that she's always been the resourceful type.  
And so she bides her time, and she waits, squirrelling away cash as she goes.

Everything chugs along in the way it always has.  
Well, it does until the morning a very 'unexpected individual makes an appearance at the pie diner, that is.

With a set of circular glasses set firmly upon his nose, an impressively fluffy set of mahoosive sideburns upon his face, wielding a flower bouquet (almost the same size as him) in his arms to boot - he looks like a (decidedly meek) man on a mission. A mission with Nott's name on it.

Almost shier than Nott if at all possible, he looks as though he's summoning up every last ounce of nerve within him to put on this grandiose display.  
The scene would be endearing if it weren't so completely and utterly bizarre. It almost loops back to being sweet in its strangeness.

"No, I don't want you to take my order. Would you please get that lady, the one right there? I want her to be my waitress."

As soon as he points at her, Nott's panic comes out in full force, flailing around for any excuse she can find to NOT look in that direction. Turning around, she snatches a banana out of the fruit bowl on the counter and squeaks into it like it's a telephone.  
It is very obviously not a telephone.

Yasha gently eases the poor undeserving banana out of her death grip before it can get pulverised, with a gentle, accompanying pat on the back.

"...Good luck with that."

Eyes snapping back to the fidgety man in front of her, Beau sees him watching Nott, enraptured.

"What do you know about that lady? What are her likes and dislikes - are there are hereditary conditions in her family tree? Does she have any food allergies or pollen sensitivites?"  
With her dry bluntness coming out in full force, Beau narrows her eyes at him, clearly discarding his rather intense line of questioning.  
He visibly breaks out into a cold sweat. Understandably, he really can't seem to look her in the eyes with a cold glare like that searing into him.

"...You're sitting in my section. I'll be the one taking your order."

There's a sudden CRASH! as Nott disappears into the backroom, pushing a rattling trolley like she's using it as a battering ram. Everybody in the vicinity winces at the painful sound. Yikes.

"Ah, could you excuse me for one moment?" Beau asks him, in a tone suddenly thick with sickly customer service saccharine.  
By the time he opens his mouth to respond, she's already gone.

\---

Jester nearly has a heart attack the second time over when Beau bursts into the kitchen just moments after Nott's crash landing.

"What was all that about? That must be him, right? The guy from the five minute date-"

"YEAH! His name is Yeza! He's an amateur magician. That's competitive in clog-dancing! And only eats white foods on WEDNESDAYS. He told me we were soulmates. It was five minutes! I didn't think he'd, like, show up here!"

"You're really freaking out right now, Nott. He sure does sound... quirky. But you know... you didn't complain about the date... I thought it went well. What's the problem?"

"The problem here, is that I like him! I like him SO MUCH! SO I PANICKED AND TOLD HIM I NEVER WANTED TO SEE HIM AGAIN!"

"You what?!"

"Why is he here - oh my god - why is he here? I knew I shouldn't have told him where I worked-"

Pacing and jumping around in tight, frantic circles, it made Beau and Jester dizzy to look at her. But it was best to let Nott figure it out, and work out whatever nervous energy she had left - for fear of a pressurised explosion. This was a lot.  
With a deep inhale, Beau folded her arms over her uniform-clad chest menacingly.

"...do you want me to flatten his ass for you?"

"NO, DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH HIM!" Nott screams, thwacking Beau on the arm as though she were personally offended by the suggestion.

"Hey, I'm just asking! I mean, he's kinda nervy, but he seems harmless enough. And by god, look at those flowers he's holding. Those things must've cost a pretty penny."

"They're a mixed bouquet of my favourite flowers layered in alphabetical order. I only mentioned them once. I hate that he remembered," Nott chimes in mournfully.  
One of her hands is clamped onto the trolley in an absolute death grip - the other is fidgeting frantically with one of her plaits so hard you'd worry that she'd pull the whole tuft of hair out.  
She looks quite frankly, like an absolute mess.

"That's... actually kind of adorable."

Beau leans down to look Nott in the eyes, freezing her with a solid, steady stare. Nott's frenetic movements come to a halt, though she's still about just barely riding the line between breathing and hyperventilating.

"Look. I really don't think you need to be scared of him. He looks and acts like a bunny rabbit on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He's sitting out there behind his flowers sweating like he's gonna drown the place. He's clearly making one hell of an effort for you. Do you... really want him to go? 'Cause if you do, I have no qualms tossing him outta the diner."

"The scary thing is... I don't."

Her scratchy voice is tiny in its taut admission.

"I want him to stay, but I don't know-"

"If you really want him to stay, that's all there is to it. It doesn't have to be complicated, or sized up or analysed. You can do this. Just take it slow, take a deep breath and... please let go of that trolley before you dent your fingerprints into it. You might lose all sensation in your fingers."

"I think I already have," she concedes, letting go - though her fingers still anxiously flex of their own accord, settling themselves in the wrinkled blue skirt of her uniform.

Simply watching Beau and Nott, Jester allows herself to muse aloud.  
"I think he's a good fit for you. And, well, he's nothing if not dogged in his pursuit, I suppose. If you wanna go talk to him, you should. You got this, alright?"

With the barest of nods, Nott makes up her mind.  
Jumping on the spot to pump herself up, Nott sets a stern grimace (one would almost call it constipated-looking) upon her face. If there was ever a time to muster up some courage, it was now.  
"Talking to him is gonna be just like a war reenactment. I just gotta put my war face on. I can do this. I can do this."

And with a deep whistling inhale, she skitters back through the doors and into the front of the diner, as ready as she'd ever be to face him.

\---

"Hello, good morning, IsaidIneverwantedtoseeyouagain, canItakeyourorder?"  
In one flat breath she spills out her thoughts and immediately regrets it. Thankfully or otherwise, he barely seems to register it.

"I'd like an egg white omelette with cottage cheese and a side of mayo."  
"Why am I even asking? It's Wednesday."  
"I'd also like a slice of 'White Knuckle' cream pie."  
"With or without whipped cream."  
"Whatever you want, I trust you implicitly. Oh, but make sure the whipped cream isn't touching the pie. Otherwise it completely ruins the experience, and you can't control the-"  
"WHIPPED CREAM TO PIE RATIO-" Nott bursts out, despite herself.  
Both of them finish the sentence in perfect harmony, turning to stare at each other in amazement.  
And instinctively, Nott lets out a wild giggling snort, then slams her hands over her mouth, horrified by the sound.

"Your laugh - that INTOXICATING laugh!"

With a deep breath, Yeza clenches his fists together as though the sweetness of her laugh were the last push he needed to finally speak up.

"I'm a very persistent man, Veth, and I really want to get to know you better! Please give me a chance. I mean, those five minutes we spent together felt like a... whole fifteen!"  
With an earnestness that floors her, Nott has to physically turn away from him to regain her bearings.  
Wordlessly, she takes the bouquet he hands her and then promptly proceeds to drops it back onto the table. Good lord that was heavier than it had any right being - how many flowers were in there?!?!

"You make me want to dance...!" Yeza punctuates his point by standing up and producing a fumbling 10-second tap-dance that nobody asks for.

"And... you inspire poetry in me! Here, I'll make it up right on the spot!

All of my life, I loved turtles.  
You Nott, are the queen!  
Do do do dooo... something in between.  
  
I... will work on that ending. Anywho, there’s... there's a reading at Rainard Park of the Federalist Papers on Saturday. If you want, I can pick you up at seven and we could go-"

"...How. Do. You. Know. About. That."

She spits out the question like it holds all the gravity of a world-shattering statement - which to her, it most likely does.

"Oh, I am very active in my local historical reenactment community! You know, I played Paul Revere in 42 Revolutionary War re-enactments. Well, 40 times, actually. Technically I was the standby Revere but 2 times Paul was out – so I did actually play it, although one of those times I got injured halfway through, I had a bayonet issue– fell off my horse and had to have my spleen removed-"

The moment that he mentioned Paul Revere, her mind whited out. She didn't register another word of his rambling explanation.

"ONE IF BY LAND. TWO IF BY SEA," she utters, breathless with the drama of it all, with one hand clutched to her heart like it could physically escape her chest.

"...and I on the opposite shore will BE!"

The moment their words synced up, they started to gape at each other like suffocating fish out of water. It would be painful to watch if it weren't so awkwardly adorable, to see these two flail around social conventions to wind up in each other's corner, if by fate.

Maybe their strangeness would fit hand-in-hand with each other's - who's to say?

As she reaches over to take his hand lightly, she meets his nervously hopeful brown eyes and feels the look warm her from her cheeks to the tips of her ears.  
Who's to say that this would work out? It could very well be a disaster.  
But she guesses that that's the risk-reward factor of it. It could be worth it. She'd never know if she didn't try.

And with his clammy hand in hers, for once she is ready to take the plunge into the land of 'maybe' with him.

...

Maybe there was something to this whole online dating thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tried to tone down the creepy vibes cause yeza would never  
> like i love ogie and dawn SO much but also you have to admit,,,  
> the beginning of their relationship: Concern.jpg  
> (also okay lets appreciate how ready beau was to knock him on his ass if yeza were a stalker - cause you know she would lmao)
> 
> Also I have a Spotify playlist for this fanfic, if you're looking for the tunes!  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2LVhKoXPprEpNNe1reyBUR?si=vSnZ8sUZQqa_R50MXtALYQ


	11. Bad Idea

Coming out of the kitchen to anxiously watch what she thought would have been an absolute train-wreck, as Jester watched Yeza and Nott work themselves out, another pie idea invited itself into her mind almost immediately.

'It-almost-makes-you-believe-again' pie...

Reach for an ingredient long forgotten in the back of your cupboard - like poppy seeds! Something you buy but forgot you had. Throw in ginger snaps.  
She giggles at the memory of Yeza's fumbling tap dancing. Tap-ioca for that. Keep on going until all the ingredients combine unexpectedly.  
And suddenly, a flash of red hair, a cute chin and deep blue eyes come running to the forefront of her mind.

...Mix it with all your questions and concerns.

\---

"Oh, Dr. Widogast! I'm sure it's nothing but you told me to call if I had any questions and concerns so...? Yes - I'm bleeding a little bit - oh it's light, I think. Come in to see you? Wow, you're open at 7? Really? Okay. See you then."

That was how her brief, yet shockingly nerve-wracking call to the gynaecologist went.

And that was what brought her to the doors of the clinic after waking up at Stupid O'clock for the appointment.

\---

"Hi, Dr. Widogast! I brought you 'makes-you-believe-again' pocket pies," Jester smiled, raising the box of homemade pie in her hands to Dr. Widogast like it's a peace offering.

With a sharp intake of breath, it takes no time at all for him to swoops down on the box - like an eagle snatching prey up into the sky. From the focused look in his eyes, he looks hellbent on it.

For some reason, she feels a hot, proud flush rise to her cheeks at how eagerly this pretty put-together man is so undone by something she's made. It's embarrassing just how much she likes seeing him eat the pies she's baked.

"When we spoke on the phone, you said that the bleeding was mild?  
"Yeah..."  
"Has it stopped?"  
"Mhm."  
"Then you're fine, Mrs. Lavorre- oh my god."

Dr. Widogast breaks off into a pleased groan at the taste of the pie - composure crumpling mid-sentence - and suddenly Jester is suddenly so embarrassed by what that does to her that she feels as though she'd suddenly like to bury her face in the sand and never come up again.

"Aren't you gonna examine me?" she asks, the tip of her tail tracing nervous circles against the back of the gynaecologist chair.  
"No, that's not necessary- oh, wow. This is truly unbelievable. Delicious is not even a good enough word to describe how this is. What you do with food, Mrs. Lavorre... it is- it is unearthly."  
Fixing her with a stare so genuine that it makes her stomach flip-flop

"Thank you! So... I'm alright, there's nothing wrong?"  
"Spotting is to be expected in early pregnancy, there's nothing to worry about- holy shit." He takes another mouthful of pie and cuts himself off yet again, his eyes fluttering closed in unrestrained bliss. She hates how good pleasure looks on his face. Well, she desperately wants to hate it but she knows she doesn't. Squeezing her hands together to grant herself courage, she tries again.

"Is that all you have to say, Dr. Widogast?"  
Unconsciously, her sweetly-accented words linger invitingly on the syllables of his surname.  
It sends a bolt of electricity through him, and he suddenly thinks himself a very, very bad man.

"No."

Her violet eyes snap up to meet his wide blue ones.

A lifetime of silence seems to stretch out between them, but neither one breaks away.

To Jester, it looks like he's almost about to say something, before choosing to bite it off at the last minute - his Adam's apple bobbing yet again, in that cute way that makes her want to kiss it. Wait, what? No. What the hell was that thought?! Was her brain totally unhinged, was-  
Jester's internal self-flagellation is interrupted by a tense throat-clearing cough.

Caleb tears himself out of the warmth she exudes, and settles himself back into cool reality.  
Don't wish for things you can never have, he tells himself - ready as he'd ever be to rid himself of the budding feelings inside of him, as he always has.

"Nothing. You can go, uh. I will see you at your next regular appointment. Don't hesitate to call me if you have any-"

She semi-tunes out his rambling as an unplaceable tidal wave of wild emotion suddenly rampages through her body; she doesn't know what to do with it at all.  
"QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS. I GOT IT."

And suddenly she's fuming and she doesn't know why.

"Waitwaitwait. Why did you have me come all the way here just to tell me that spotting is a perfectly normal symptom of early pregnancy? I had to get up early, take the bus, walk five blocks just to have you tell me that there's nothing wrong at all?"

"I have no response to that." The man looks as out of his depth as she's ever seen him.

A frustrated noise tears out of her throat before she can stop it, and now she's firing questions at him.

"What time does this office usually open at?  
"Nine o'clock."  
"So you came in here 2 hours early just to tell me that spotting is a perfectly normal symptom?"  
"Well, it seems that way...?"  
"Goodbye, doctor."

Jester knows full well that she's acting childishly but everything is suddenly just so much. She's so overwhelmed she can feel it in her fingertips, and she realises that she's shaking. She wants to- no, NEEDS - to get out of here before she does something she regrets-

"Actually, you know what, Doctor?!"

Too late. It appears that the bad decision train has started its journey, and it sure doesn't seem to be flagging anytime soon.  
The following slam of her bag upon the examination table seems to agree with the sentiment.

"I think you're strange and I'm not sure if I want you to be my doctor anymore because you make me really uncomfortable!"

"No, no- I am so sorry, Jester- I am not going to do it anymore, I will stop doing whatever it is that I do that makes you uncomfortable-"

"YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN! You're kind and you do the "nice guy" talky thing that you do and I just- ugh!"

The blood is rushing to her face, turning her bright purple. This is just too much, she needs to get out of here, to ESCAPE, in any way she can-  
And like that of a cornered animal, suddenly she flusters and takes off, out of the office and presumably far away from here.  
Helplessly, Caleb picks up the leather bag left in her wake. She blusters back into the room and he starts to speak.  
"Mrs. Lavorre, you forgot your b-"

Before either of them know what's happening, she runs up, drags him in by the face, and kisses him hard.

...And then she tries to run out of the room again. He freezes for a second, then rapidly scrambles like a mad man to beat her to the door.

"Mrs. Lavorre!?"  
She blinks and next thing she knows he's desperately leaning against the door to keep it shut and Traveller, she doesn't know what to do. That was so stupid. What possessed her to do that? She sees him swallow hard and she prepares herself for a verbal beat down. Instead his voice, although an octave higher in its shock, is still as kind as its ever been.  
"Please, wait, I- we should talk about this, I want to just talk to you somewhere outside of here; can we get coffee together, or something? Anything, just-"

"Dr. Widogast, I can't have coffee. It's on the bad foods list you gave me, what kind of doctor are you?!"

He just presses his thin lips together in response, before raising another awkward offer.  
"...do you want a smoothie instead?"

Burying her face in her hands, Jester tries desperately to get her thoughts in order. The crackling tension in the air makes it impossible to think straight. She can't even look him in the eyes, or she thinks she might just jump on him - and kiss the living daylights out of him. If he didn't want to, it'd make it easy to turn away. To run away from this sinking ship and forget that this ever happened.  
The fact of the matter is, she thinks that he wants to. And that makes it dangerous.

For a moment, Jester thinks that she might just go into cardiac arrest. It'd save her from the temptation of this situation, at the very least.  
"It's a bad idea, me and you," she mumbles through her hands, mostly to herself.  
"I absolutely agree. It's a terrible idea, me and you."

Even as they say this, they're getting closer to each other.  
He already looks beautifully wrecked, flushed pink, pupils blown wide with reluctant but undeniable desire.  
The inches of space in between them get smaller; they're sharing air and their noses are almost brushing against each other's.  
Dreamily, Jester thinks that it'd be just so easy to lean in a little more and...

Traveller. This is her doctor. She's married. She's pregnant. What could be a worse situation than this? She shouldn't, she can't, she...

Oh, she HAS to.

The tension snaps, and they're on each other like it's the end of the world; like they'll never touch another person again.  
He makes her feel like a goddamn live-wire.

The kiss starts out frantic, and then they’re fumbling and laughing into each other’s mouths, and it makes her feel alive.  
Warm, calloused hands skim the exposed skin of her soft thighs, and she leans into the touch with a shuddering gasp of pleasure. His touch is awed and reverent in a way that makes her body sing; that makes her think that... maybe she could be good, even though what they're doing is so terribly bad.

As she goes to tuck her face into the pale hollow of his neck to hide her face with her usual intimate shame, she feels his hand reach up to cup her cheek with more tenderness than she’s felt from a man in... what must’ve been decades. He treats her like he’s offering her the most reverent of worship. He may as well be, with the way his senses are drowning in her.

Sure, the kiss is a touch awkward at the start, while they gain their bearings in feverish, desperate connection, but he kisses like he cares and it makes all the difference.  
His mouth slots heatedly - insistently - against her own, and she isn't sure she's ever felt anything like this before in her life. She can't get enough of it.

'Oh,' thinks Jester dazedly, mind hazy with pleasure as they part. If this was what kissing was supposed to be like, she understood what all the fuss was about now.

Years upon years of godawful kisses are cleared out of her mind immediately. She's not going to be able to bear another sloppy, jackhammer-tongued kiss from her husband again if this is what she has to compare it to. She's not an object to be owned, or a cave to be plundered, like she'd been led to believe for... so many years. This is what a kiss could be like.  
And oh, she wanted to do it forever.

He kisses the way he acts, she notes - a little unsure, but kind and attentive and completely and utterly addicting.  
It's almost unfair, she thinks - that he can give her a taste of something so world-shattering, that she might not ever get again. 'A-bite-of-the-forbidden-fruit' pie.

Never mind the fact that she might never see herself as more than whatever it is that she's started. Forget all the bad things in her life.  
Maybe if he held her tight enough, he'd make sense and make good of everything that has just been so bad. She's willing to try it.

Jester lets the river of sense in her run dry, and for once, just allows herself to feel. Consequences be damned. She thinks that maybe it's worth it to take a chance on him.

Firmly pulling his body up against hers, she thinks that she's had enough of thinking things through.

And as far as bad ideas went, this was a pretty good one, wasn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a sort of continuation of this! It's smuttier, but I also think it's really really cute. :')  
> Check it out if you feel so inclined!  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/23827504
> 
> Also I have a Spotify playlist for this fanfic, if you're looking for the tunes!  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2LVhKoXPprEpNNe1reyBUR?si=vSnZ8sUZQqa_R50MXtALYQ


	12. I Didn't Plan It

Another day, another pie, but Jester feels like she's on cloud 9 this morning. Her absentminded dreaminess leaks into every thought she has.  
There's no wondering who the inspiration for her next bake comes from. The memories of kind eyes, and gentle hands, brand themselves permanently into the forefront of her mind and refuse to let go.

 _'I-wanna-play-doctor-with-my-gynaecologist'_ _pie._

Soft, spoonable vanilla custard, drizzled with _warm, melted caramel...  
_ Nuts - totally _nuts_. Topped with honey-kissed whipped cream and... a banana.

Jester flushes bright purple at the image her mind conjures up.

On second thoughts, hold the banana.

Shaking her head furiously she tries to shed those thoughts - the pleasant, pleasant memories of-

No. W _ake the hell up,_ _Jester!_

Her brain takes on the task of scolding her poor heart with as much spirit as it can muster. But admittedly, it's not much.  
She could say that she regretted it, but that would be a boldfaced lie.  
The thought of his lips on her skin, her hand in his, the care he laves upon her... it makes her skin burn pleasantly hot for once in her life. But she has to snap herself out of it. Is she insane? This is insane. And unconscionable. Totally unconscionable. A new pie idea bubbles up within her at the thought.

_'I-can't-have-an-affair-with-my-doctor-because-it's-wrong-and-my-husband-will-kill-me' pie._

'The pie name really just rolls off the tongue!' she thinks drily to herself, imaginary pies still swirling about her head as she begins to puzzle out another recipe.

Add cold water to chocolate stirrups- _I mean_ _syrup!_

The slip up leaves her even more flustered than before.

Bring together a rich, creamy cheesecake filling and pour into a truly flaky crust - don't over-bake it...

Picking up a tray of freshly cooled pies, she starts to bring them out to the front, her mind still ticking away over her new recipe.

What she doesn't expect is to see Beau and Yasha tangled up in one another, kissing the life out of each another like it's their last day on Earth.

Jester _yelps_ at the sight, stumbling into the counter in her surprise, dropping the tray of fresh pies on the floor.  
She doesn't give herself the time to mourn their loss before she's wildly backing out of the room, hands out in front of her as if that'll change anything. 

"I didn't see anything! I'm morning sick, I just need to go find someplace to be sick-"

She stumbles back into the kitchen with a hand clamped over her mouth to try and process whatever the hell that was. She doesn't even need to turn around to know that it's Beau who's entered the kitchen behind her, an uncharacteristic rambling tangent in a so-familiar voice already filling her ears.

"I know you saw that! I know I shouldn’t have done it! I wasn't looking for it and it was an accident but-"

“An accident? An _accident_ ?”  
The question bursts out of her before she can stop them and she regrets the edge to her words.

Beau cuts her off with a tense, drawn stare that pins her down and leaves her rendered desperately speechless. "Don't look at me like that, Jester." 

Jester knows her friend better than anybody, and she can tell that Beau is fuming - but adamantly trying to keep a lid on it.  
Whether this ire is directed towards Jester or herself, she honestly can't tell.

The silence hangs oppressively over them as Jester begins to clean up the dropped pies. Something - _anything_ \- to do with her hands to distract her from... whatever it is this is. It feels like a silent interrogation.

"Like you're some saint."

The door flaps open as Yasha walks past the two of them. The silence doesn’t abate. Jester can feel the tension palpable in the air, and she’s quite sure that nobody is going to address the elephant in the room. Fine by her. She wouldn’t know what to say about it even if they did bring it up.

The moment she disappears, Beau speaks up yet again.

“I was just trying to find something to feel after years and years of lots of _nothing_.”

Her words strike true with a painful resonance that echoes in the hollow chasm of Jester’s chest. But she doesn’t know what to do with the feeling at all. 

“But what about Tori?”

“Jester, my wife wears Pampers, screams at me constantly and insists on sleeping in a different room.”

“...then why don’t you just leave her, Beau?”

Jester's voice is tiny and she can tell that the words hit a nerve. As she’s trained herself to see, she knows that an explosion is imminent - Jester braces herself for the impact.

“ _Because I_ **_LOVE_ ** _her!_ I wouldn’t leave her just because I have to change her diapers three times a day - what kind of person would do that?”

“What kind of person hooks up with their boss?”  
This is a day of not thinking through the impact of your words. Jester hates herself for the uncontrollable judgement in her voice. Isn't she doing the same damn thing?

“I’m a diner waitress. It’s not exactly like I’m sleeping my way to the top, is it?” Beau fires back, her voice dripping with heated sardonicism as she continues.

“And hey, I didn't say anything about your visit with the doctor, did I?”

Jester’s blood runs cold at the scathingly pointed jab. She knows about that? Oh god.

“Do you think I didn’t see the look on your face when you came into work? It must have been one hell of a checkup cause it looked like he was putting the pap back in SMEAR!”

“B-Beau! That was one time, and I wasn't in my right mind!” she retorts, though she feels her entire body burn with the shame of the lie. 

A train of reflection and evaluation hits her and sends her reeling. Is she throwing rocks from her glass house? Self-identified hypocrisy and bewilderment start to churn in her stomach in a way she can’t make sense of.  
She can't seem to swallow the bitter taste of guilt that lingers on her tongue, more so for her own hypocrisy than anything else.

I mean, who is she to judge, when she’s making the exact same mistake? It’s not her life to live.  
But before she can voice any of these thoughts, Beau has already gotten up to leave.

“...just go back into the pantry, and bake yourself another 'bury-the-bullshit' pie, Jester.”

The exhausted resignation in Beau’s words stings worse than pure anger would’ve.

“I know it’s not right, and I sure as hell didn't plan it but it's finally something to feel for once in my life. And I know it’s not my place to say but I think you need the same thing.”

And with that, Beau sweeps out of the kitchen, leaving Jester feeling like she's been left in the dust, as uncomfortably conflicted as she’s ever felt.

Life has handed her something else - bitter and confusing - to tuck into another pie.


	13. A Worse Idea

Sitting on his examination table, with the weight of a pie heavy in her lap, the situation feels mockingly familiar to Jester.

A sense of unfortunate deja vu floods her senses. She only realises that she's been holding her breath in tense anticipation when her lungs begin to burn with the discomfort. She releases the exhale of air begging to be let out.

"Hello, Mrs. Lavorre."  
She hears his voice moments before she sees him walk into the room.

"Oh! Dr. Widogast," she returns politely, hands inadvertently gripping a little tighter into the poor pie tray she’s holding steady. They have to talk about this. She has to nip this in the bud. Oh god.

The feigned formality between them feels deeply uncomfortable, but necessary nonetheless. At least until the doors are closed and they’re alone.  
As it is, the larger-than-life Nurse Keg is standing between them with a stack of her medical info.

"So... how are you feeling?" Caleb questions carefully, hands nervously smoothing down his already-creaseless slacks. He's nervous. Admittedly, she is too.

"I'm fine!"  
Maybe she answers a little too quickly, but it’s fine. She’s fine. She hopes.

The unspoken tension between them is broken by a blissfully unaware Nurse Keg, who reaches forward eagerly for the pie in Jester's hands. She doesn't argue with the silent request to hand it over, passing it on wordlessly.  
The pie wasn’t really for her, but if she wanted it - what the hell! It’s hers.

"You brought a pie! That's nice - what kind is it?" Keg asks, rubbing her stubble thoughtfully as she inspects it.

A sumptuous creme patissiere where the vanilla bean dances across the tastebuds just so... Topped with freshly whipped cream and a dreamy, heaping coating of juicy seasonal berries.

"...'A-little-wild' wild berry pie," she sighs, hoping to god that she isn't blushing hotly at her own inadvertent confession of guilt.

Well, wild is one way to put it.

It looks like the tension in the room becomes too much for the nervy doctor to bear because words suddenly burst out of him, like the popping of a balloon.

_"I need you to go reweigh Mrs. Hydris!"_

A little shocked by his outburst, Keg quirks a questioning eyebrow at the strange demand.  
"But Dr. Widogast, I weighed her last..."

_"Please! Please! Please!"_

If she weren't so deeply enamoured by him, Jester would bury her face in her hands in deep despair at how deeply inept he is at lying. He's being so _obvious._ For god's sake...

Clearly, Keg doesn't have a response for the sudden high-strung request he squeaks out, but with a moment's pause, she relents anyways.

Confusedly, she leaves the room to go weigh Mrs. Hydris for the second time that week, at the doctor's slightly-questionable call.

As soon as he thinks that Keg is out of earshot, he speaks up.

"Don't do that again, Jester."  
He sounds genuinely worried. Jester feels bad about it, but perhaps not bad enough about it not to run away again. Enigmatically, she's used to running away and staying put, all at once. What would it take for her to stay and try again?

"What, bring pie?"

Choking down her difficult thoughts, Jester responds with feigned, wide-eyed ignorance which she honestly doesn’t think Caleb will take to.  
She’s smarter than that and he absolutely knows it.

"What? Of course not that- I meant go away for a whole month without calling!"

His voice is rising in its pitch, heavy with concern, and she hates the way it makes her heart thump in her chest.

"Well, I guess I didn't have any _questions or concerns."  
_Bitterness leaks into her voice like a dark, misplaced cocoa, but she can't stop her biting tone.

"Don't do that to me."

Wringing her hands together nervously, she sighs before working up the nerve to say what should've been said before.

"What we did was crazy, Caleb- I mean, Dr. Widogast. I mean, we shouldn't. We can't."

"You're right, you're right."  
With a tense nod, he forces down the misery that clouds him at the thought of never being with her again.  
"So I guess we're just officially forgetting everything that's happened then."

"I guess we officially are," she agrees, ignoring the similar sinking of her heart that the idea gives her.

This is the smarter choice. She can’t consider the alternative. She's making the only reasonable choice amongst these wildly fantastical circumstances.

Her heart disagrees.

She feels the intensity of his stare burning into the side of her head and makes it a point not to look at him.

If she looks into those blue eyes of his for even a moment, she knows her resolve will falter, and she'll fold like a deck of cards.

"I just... I want to apologise for it. I almost called you just to apologise. I want you to know that it will never happen again and from here on out, our relationship is strictly professional-"

The entire time he's speaking, Jester's violet eyes never leave his face. She stares at his soft hair, wide blue eyes and handsome chin... the worried set to his features with the desperation to keep her happy and- oh, gods, she can't.

_Fuck being reasonable._

With little-to-no warning, Jester's self-restraint snaps like that of a string.  
She finds herself pulling him in for another deep, desperate kiss, her hands set firmly into the lapels of his white coat. She feels him kiss back and the relief that this gives her saturates her every nerve and leaves her feeling electrified.

That is, until he pulls away from her.

"Jester, no." He holds out a finger like he's scolding a bad puppy and she feels incredibly slighted by it despite herself. "Huh?"

"Not with the door open," he finishes, before rushing and almost tripping in his haste to shut it.

It seems like she hardly blinks before he's back to kissing the living daylights out of her, and she's thankful for it. She feels his hands all over hers and she can’t imagine anything better. 

That is, until Nurse Keg walks back in, slice of wild berry pie in hand.

The ensuing scramble to tear themselves away from each other is utterly pointless in the face of unfortunate revelation. Making no mistake, they all knew full well what was happening.

Comedically, Caleb almost falls off the table in his haste to pretend like they were _not_ just seen hopelessly feeling each other up.

Jester would find it hilarious if she weren’t so suffocated by the situation at hand.

For a long while, nobody speaks. The silence is too loud for far too long, and it makes Jester’s stomach churn with nervousness and shame.

" _Mrs. Hydris still weighs 142 lbs._ "

The emphasis in the nurse's words speaks volumes.

"Thank you very much, Nurse Keg. So... Mrs. Lavorre. You're still taking your prenatal vitamins?" he supplies, desperate to fill the silence with anything he possibly can.

"Faithfully," she responds, unable to find the nerve to look either of them in the eyes. He may be grasping at conversational straws, but she’s thankful to take the out in anyway she can.

"That's... good."

"...faithfully my ass," Keg mumbles to herself through a mouthful of pie. It seems like she’s decided that this is way outside her pay-grade - whatever.

"I'd like you to come back again tomorrow, Mrs. Lavorre.”

"Tomorrow?!" The shock is evident in Keg's voice and Jester almost winces at the sound.

"Yes. I'm glad we're on the same page.

"We're ALL on the same page!" Keg calls back behind herself sarcastically, before leaving the room, shutting the door _hard_ behind herself.

The moment they hear the door click shut behind her, they're on each other yet again.

Jester wishes she could say that that time was the last time.

It's not.

\---

'Pineapple-upside-down' pie?  
'In-the-dark' dark chocolate pie?  
'A-little-wild' wild berry-

"Mm!"

Jester's racing thoughts of saucy new pies to bake break off into a pleased groan, as she grips Caleb and pulls him closer to her.  
She looks down and sees him quirk an eyebrow at her, as if knowing that her mind is running a million miles an hour inside her head.

Okay, message received loud and clear. No pies right now - just feelings.

Jester finds herself lost in him, time and time again.


	14. 'The Pursuit of Happiness' Pie

Chaos may be a closer friend to her than she'd prefer, but at least she knows the diner's bustle will remain the same.  
And remain the same it has - that same old tortle diner owner sitting exactly where he's always chosen to sit for the past... god knows how long.

Brightly, Jester rushes up to take the order of her favourite regular. She hasn't been feeling very cheerful lately, for obvious reasons, but it's a wide and honest smile across her face for Orly.

"Hiya, Orly! How are you today?"

"Same bastard as yesterday, kid," he grumbles, though the warmth in his eye belies his cantankerous front.

Well, for all the compilations of her current predicament, at least there was one person who'd stay the same.  
Sitting at the same table, putting in the same order and always there to exchange the same prickly barbs.  
For the first time in her life, she welcomed the consistency. 

Choking back a laugh, she nods her agreement. “Naturally.”

“The more important question is: how are you?”

“Same trainwreck as always!” she fires back, smiling ruefully at the truth in her own words.

“...and the _charming_ husband?”

He spits the word out - and in his slow, deliberate drawl, it almost sounds dangerous.

Not that he’d ever do anything, but you’d stand to wonder things about the tortle back in his heyday.

“ ...charming as ever,” she sighs, fidgeting with the end of her order-taking pen in her restlessness. She didn’t like to think about her husband unless she absolutely had to. This was not one of those times of necessity.

“And how about the lipstick-smudger? That dog on the side?”

“What? _Orly!”_ she hisses, looking behind her with instinctive defensiveness. What if her husband walked in? If he heard… she’d be dead - he’d beat her to a pulp and that’d be the end of it.

And well, if there was ever anybody to floor her with an armour-piercing question like that, she’d expect it to be Orly but still.

Goddammit, he knew.

Orly always knew these things.

It was equal parts stressful and appreciated, to know that he kept such a close eye on her.

For all his crotchety demeanour, it couldn’t be denied - the old curmudgeon honestly did care about her.

He cared, _and_ he paid attention too. Things wouldn’t go slipping under the radar with him, as careful as she thought she was being.

Jester juggles with spluttered explanations and jagged, pieced-together defences, almost incoherent in her panicked retort. “Sh! Well- huh- hey, I-I'm not having an _affair_ , it's just that-"

She’s cut off by the slow, patient offering of a tissue.

As discreetly as she can, she snatches it up and uses it to wipe her mouth. She makes a helpless note to herself to get something smudge-proof next time.

And unfortunately, Jester is not that discreet.

"Your lipstick is all smudged. Like someone gave you a good one."

His laugh - slow as molasses - rumbles through him, but for once, it's a decidedly humourless sound.

"Now, when you're done wiping away your indiscretions."

Orly plods steadily forward in conversation despite her bluster, in the way that only he can.

“You wanna hear your horoscope?”

“No.”

“Well, too bad. Here it is.” He leans in close to his paper in feigned examination. “Aquarius: Even if you have a miserable, snake husband, you probably shouldn’t be having no affair.”

Jester feels the air get sucked out of the room at his words.

It ain’t her damn horoscope, but he isn’t wrong.

“...’cause it’s beneath you and could make you seem like a common hussy. Now!”

With the rustle of his newspaper snapping shut, he continues on.

“Seeing as it is Wednesday, I will have the Singing Tuna Fish casserole. No pickle on the plate. Well-done Frenchie fries with melted Swiss cheese and gravy _on their own plate._ And a slice of Jester’s ‘Chocolate Strawberry Oasis’ pie.”

She jots down his order - more so just to have something to do with her hands. By god, she could probably recite all 7 of his orders from any day of the week if she wanted to. As it stands, her mind is obviously occupied elsewhere at the moment.

“Now I really think that that’s the one you should make for that pie contest. So you can win that money and leave your husband fair and square. Then by all means, go smudging your lipstick with whoever you please. And hey… don’t look so blue, child. Nobody makes chocolate strawberry pie like you do.”

He doesn’t have to say what he means out loud for her to understand it.

The sentiment is not lost on Jester, as she gives him a soft nod and swallows against the sudden gnarl of emotion in her throat.

“You _really_ think that pie’s good enough to win?”

Her question is small and vulnerable, the sound catching on a shallow breath.

“I wouldn’t lie about it. That pie is really something special. How each flavour opens itself up, one by one, like a chapter in a book… First, you get flooded with chocolate, dark and bittersweet like an old flame. And then strawberry - the way strawberry was always supposed to taste, but never knew how…”

The faraway look in his eyes sharpens into focus yet again.

“Actually, you know what? Forget all the other stuff I ordered, just bring me the damn pie.”

With an eager nod, Jester scurries off to grab the slice of pie, ignoring the feeling of Orly’s one good eye trained on her back as she leaves.

As she comes back to drop the pie off at his table, she lets herself speak her mind - just a little.

“Now, Orly. I don’t believe for one second you’re as mean as you play. You tip me better than anyone.”

And with the playful, knowing grin reserved only for her favourite old geezer, she turns away and starts to walk into the pantry, though not before bumping into Beau. Oh, this was her chance-

“Beau! Listen, I’m sorry that I ever made you feel judged and-”

“Hey, it was no big deal. I was just a little touchy about it. I’m sorry too. You didn’t deserve for me to blow up on you like that.”

Jester can feel the remorse radiating off of her in waves, and places a gentle hand on her shoulder to ease it.

“It’s fine, Beau. I mean, I might get mad at my husband, but the thought of hurting you? I couldn’t stand it.”

“...I’m your best friend, Jester. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”  
With a returning clap on the shoulder, and a rare, reassuring smile from the blue-eyed waitress in question, she’s gone.

Moving on towards the kitchen, Jester bites back a laugh when she overhears an exchange between the most unlikely of duos - Yasha and Yeza.

“So as I was saying, I think I’m going to ask Veth to meet my mom today and-”

“Why are you in my kitchen?” Yasha asks plainly, raising an eyebrow at the heavily-sideburned man, who immediately grows more than flustered.

“Uh, right, I will get out of your kitchen now,” he repeats, scrambling to pull himself onto a diner chair just outside the order window, turning to Nott as she walks in through the diner's back door.

“Oh! Veth! Here we go! ...Everyday I think of you, I think _yes_.” 

“Aw, he's writing me a poem right now!" she giggles, running up to meet him, her plaits bouncing behind her in her rush.

"We hold these truths to be self evident... I am more than he who just omits. I am poetry, living the dream, love! Yes. ...Uhuh. Yes."

Despite the poem making little-to-no-sense to anybody else, Nott seems charmed.  
Jester supposes that that's what matters, really.

“You know, I don't think I ever understood the declaration of independence until now," she sighs dreamily, chin resting on her hands and eyes never leaving Yeza's. "Life, liberty and...”

_'...the Pursuit of Happiness' pie._

Unconsciously, Jester tunes everything around her out as a new idea begins to take root in her mind. She's dead to the world until she can hammer out this recipe.

Melt warm Golden Delicious apples with free-falling brown sugar, add cinnamon and allspice.  
Fold in cocoa chiffon until they merge together perfectly. Top with peaks of everlasting Chantilly cream and dust gently with powdered sugar. Garnish with delicate satiny rose petals.

Jester might be thinking about pie, but what her heart's really set on is her gynaecologist and she knows it.  
Still, her daydreams run away with her. She thinks up flowery images of him kissing her gently, of picking him up and spinning him around, of him affectionately draping a garland over her neck and tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ears.  
Maybe if she left her husband... changed doctors... gave it some time... it could be alright? It could give them the space to start, couldn't it?

Her fantasies are cut short by the cruel edge of reality when the voice of Nurse Keg breaks through her thoughts, snapping her out of her dreamy haze.

The impact of falling from her perfectly-crafted dreamland of powdered sugar and meringue clouds and hitting the ground sends a painful, unexpected jolt up her system.

"Mrs. Lavorre! Dr. Widogast isn't here. He had to fly back to the Zemni Fields for a family emergency."

Ah, right.

Numbly, she finds that the 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' pie feels like lead in her hands without the one person who was meant to hold it.


	15. Heartbeat

The sudden booming of Keg’s voice brings her back to Earth yet again.  
This time, Jester welcomes the bump. Anything to get her mind off of him.

“So, since the doctor’s away… guess who’ll be examining your chacha today? _...Me!”_  
The boisterous nurse laughs the joke away, though she stops herself when she sees the sudden horrified pallor spreading across Jester’s face at the thought.  
“I’m just kidding."

She starts to pull out various pieces of notes and medical equipment, before stopping to give the rather checked-out Jester a long, searching look.  
"Hey… you look like shit, girl. You feeling okay?”

Keg's not particularly eloquent in any sense of the word, but Jester can tell she means well enough and she stands to appreciate it for what it is.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just the baby,” Jester lies, brushing her sudden strangeness off easily, though she thinks the farce isn’t quite as strong as it usually is.   
Her masks haven't been as foolproof as they've usually been. Glimpses of herself are shown through the cracks in her falsehoods, and she's being a little more... well, her. She doesn't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's her truth.

Despite her lacklustre excuses, Keg thankfully lets her away with the little white fib.

“Right. And how are things working out with Dr. Widogast anyways?” she asks, with feigned casual interest. A little nosy but to be fair, who wouldn't be? What a mistake to be making.

“He... attempts to remain very professional,” she eventually summarises drily, fingers drumming against the aluminium tray of what was meant to be the reception of her perfect dream. The tinny sound rattles against her nerves, but she can't find it in her to still that nervous fidgety part of her.  
Jester knows that she’s being ridiculous and unreasonable, but understanding the practicalities of such things never eased the pain of a heart.

“He does, does he? With such a lovely bedside manner too, I’d imagine,” she quips, with a hearty nudge to Jester's shoulder.

The targeted jest doesn't hold any malice, but Jester feels her body flush hotly with embarrassment at the implication regardless. She’s incredibly thankful when the bearded nurse moves onto another topic, of her own volition, before Jester's given the chance to self-destruct yet again.

“Is that pie for me?”

Shrugging in spite of herself, a wistfulness tugs Jester's lips up into a tired facsimile of a smile, hearing the eagerness in her tone. She suppresses a quiet sigh into the palm of her hand.   
Not who the excitement was initially meant for, but if it made her happy...

“I guess it is now.” 

...well, it would make one of them, at least.

“Aw, tell me what kind of pie it is!”

“I call it… ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ pie.”  
Jester isn't sure if her weariness has seeped into her tone, but she does feel steeped in melancholy for some inexplicable reason.  
Why does she feel so torn up about it? He's under no obligation to confide in her. The realisation hits and settles uncomfortably.

“Pursuit of happiness...? I think we could all use a slice of that nowadays.”  
The sage agreement in Keg's voice is undermined by her obvious enthusiasm to get into the pie.

Jester nods furtively in response, barely registering the sudden press of the stethoscope to her stomach. Wait, stethoscope to the stomach?

“Heartbeat strong and steady there, Mrs. Lavorre. Do you want to hear the baby’s heartbeat? Here.”

And before Jester has the time to refuse, Keg has moved her hand to hold the stethoscope to her stomach, and put it into her ears. The well-intentioned, yet overbearing nurse leaves the room and lets Jester have a moment to herself. (As well as to probably dig into as much of the pie as she can before she's obligated to nip back in, Jester imagines.)

_Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump._

When Jester hears that fast little beat inside her, she freezes.  
She can’t breathe, or move, or do anything other than focus on that little thumping inside her.

It’s something so very small, and yet only _now_ does it feel like the most significant thing that’s ever happened to her in the grand scheme of her duly uneventful life.

Everything about this little baby has suddenly become so, so real.  
There is a life inside of her, and she can feel its heart thrumming away. Her heart might be racing, but her brain is overtaken with a wave of calm that has become a such distant stranger to her.

Putting the stethoscope down, her hand shoots to her stomach and without thinking, her voice floods out of her, trembling and terrified and awed, all at once.

“Dear baby,” Jester begins, with a shuddering exhale. Reflexively her eyes flutter shut, a worried crease between her brow at the feeling.  
She can’t feel the beat without the doctor’s device, but she knows that it’s there. It is so much to _feel._

“I think I should start by saying that I’m sorry.”  
She smiles unevenly through the film of unshed tears in her eyes. 

“Don’t take it personally, little one.  
I’m not super excited and happy like the other mamas, but it’s not your fault.  
Don’t feel bad that I’m not jumping for joy, or that I don’t really know if I’ll be a good mama for you.  
Even though my life’s a mess, and the world isn’t so pretty like it is in those baby books, I'm here. But I don’t really know what I can give you, baby.  
What if I don’t win that contest?  
Then I don’t have any money, and I don’t have any hope, and I can’t leave my husband. What am I going to do then?”

Jester’s fingers sink lightly into the fabric of her dress, covering her stomach. She knows full well that the only one who can respond to her now is herself, but she listens out for an answer all the same.  
Whether it be the baby, the Traveller or her mother, could somebody just give her a sign that what she was doing was the right thing?  
  
Signs don't ever come when you ask for them.  
All she receives is silence, and she'll have to make do with it.

“...sometimes I think I should give you up to a nice family - one who can give you all the things I can’t, and love you so much, you won’t know what to do with it all.  
Other times... I wish I could just run away. And I think that it is so selfish of me. That I don’t know if I can be strong enough for you.  
What kind of messy, awful momma does that make me? I don't think I'll be even half the mother to you that my Mama was to me, but I'm going to try, and you're going to have to try with me, okay?” 

She chokes back a breathless, teary laugh to herself, as Nurse Keg comes quietly back into the room. Quickly-set composure settles itself onto her features the moment she hears someone trying to enter the room. The company of others is no place for her to bare that part of her soul to anybody else but the silence of a room and the heartbeat of her baby.

Even though the rest of the appointment wraps up without a hitch, the lump in her throat - and the heaviness in her heart - never subsides.


	16. You Matter to Me

Days tick on and turn into weeks.  
She hasn't heard from him in _weeks.  
_His phone number stares out mockingly from her contacts but she just can't bring herself to call him.  
The calendar pages flip onwards, uncaring of her plight.

Jester's life feels unfairly grey without him in it.

She still bakes, but her heart isn't in it anymore.

That terrifies her.

Baking is the only thing she has.  
Turning to it and finding only her own numb indifference...  
Well, what does that mean for her?  
  
If she doesn't have love, and she doesn't even have baking anymore - what's the point?  
...she may as well be dead.

It is thought that would usually be far too bitter to swallow. For once it just sits on her tongue.

She allows it.  
It is as flavourless as the rest of her thoughts.

Her mouth is always dry and every pie filling tastes like cardboard to her.

Her pies don't have joy or anger - or even sadness in them.  
They're just pies.  
She's never said that before in her life.

So, that's it, huh? That's all?  
It doesn't feel like the end of the chapter with Dr. Widogast. But she supposes that it is. 

Still, if that was all it was meant to be to him, so be it. It's better for everybody this way if she lets it go. She's better off without him.

That's not true.

She lets the lie exist and hopes that she'll believe it someday.

\---

Jester thinks that she's done an admirable job of getting those kind, blue eyes out of her head.  
Which is why the last thing she expects to see is the very source of her deepest joys and her farthest woes, walking into the diner kitchen like he _belongs_ there.

He looks as perfect as always and the thought makes her want to strangle him.

“Caleb- Dr. Widogast?! _What are you doing here?_ You can't be in here-”

She knows she sounds unfairly upset - accusatory, even - when god, he hasn't _done anything-_ but she can't seem to put a lid on it. All that pushed-down unhappiness is bubbling up to the surface and she knows she’s gonna overflow if she doesn’t do something about it-

“I-it’s been weeks. I can’t take it, not knowing how you are and-”

" _Dr. Widogast, we have to end this_."

Jester even stuns herself with the words.  
She finds that she can't snatch them back out of the air. They hover and seep into the wretched, soul-crushing silence that stretches out between them.  
It's just endless quiet. It could drive a person to madness. 

It’s driving _her_ to madness not hearing what's going on in his damn head.

He’s gaping at her and god, she can't even _look_ at him because she knows what she'll see and she _knows_ won't be able to take it.

She owes him an explanation. Well, she doesn’t, but she has to speak, to say anything-

Her voice is small and uneven when she speaks up again.

“I’ve been thinking a lot and… we can't keep this up, doctor. I’m still married, I'm pregnant and you’re my gynaecologist. It’s not right. And just think about it. You're 'Staten Grove' money and I'm trailer trash nothing. We live in completely different worlds. We wouldn't work out, even if we tried.”

Every single instinct in her screams that she's wrong, that it _could_ work, but she shuts down the protests of her heart, ignoring the way it pounds its impassioned dissent against her chest.

"That doesn't matter to me. I won't have a conversation about how crazy this is and how bad my judgement is because I already know that. And I'm not going to say how sorry I am to have been with you, because I would be lying. And Jester?"

"Mrs. Lavorre," she mumbles, correcting him stiffly. He looks physically taken aback by her chiding tone and she almost finds it within herself to regret it.

"...do you really think that little of yourself?"

The silence - and the shame in the violet eyes that can't quite seem to meet his - say more than a million words ever could.

"Don't say anything, Widogast. Don't try to talk me out of it. Just go."

She sounds tired, self-defeated almost, but if that's what she really wants, he knows that it's not his place to push it any further.  
Caleb ducks his head and yields, reluctantly backing his way out of the kitchen.

A fresh wave of desperation nearly overwhelms her at the sight of him leaving. For all her false bravado, she doesn’t want him out of her life and she knows it.

Jester doesn't know what possesses her to speak up again, but the strangled, tearsoaked words are out in the open air before she knows it.

"I don't know how to do this. I haven't felt anything like this. I haven't felt in a very long time."

And the tremble in her voice freezes him in place.

"...Neither have I."

"So what now?"  
Her words are accompanied by a humourless laugh. But she's smiling at him at least, and it's something. He'll take anything she'll give him.  
The thought of never seeing that smile again summons up a newfound nerve in him. 

So he lets himself try.

"You could teach me how to bake a pie?" he offers, hands curling nervously around the strap of his bag in wait for her response.

It’s the last thing she expects him to say.  
He's trying to join her on her level. Pie is - and always has been - her domain, and he's taking a step back to meet her there. She knows how hard he's trying to avoid backing away and running from the situation.  
God, why is he trying so hard for her? This only makes it harder. If she had an ounce of sense in her head, she'd reject and yet...

"Seriously? Do you mean that?"

"I do."

All she has to do is let him in.

She sucks in a harsh breath, thinks for a minute longer, then nods.  
Her voice comes out more placid than she expected. To the untrained ear, she almost sounds... peaceful.

“...I can do that, sure.”

Caleb takes a few steps forward towards the kitchen island, piled high with pie ingredients.

“I… got you a gift. I hope you like it.”

With shaky hands, she watches him closely as he pulls a box out of his bag and proffers it to her carefully. When she unboxes it, she sees whatever it is he’s so nervous about.

It’s a pie tin. It has her name engraved on the back. It's solid, weighty in her hands. Real shiny, and se can't bite back her honest smile at the unexpected, welcome sight. 

Ever thoughtful. Even as messy as everything is with him, he’s so damn thoughtful. When’s the last time she got a gift? Wow.

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," she admits, turning it over in her hands.

"It's uh, deep-dish - non-stick," he clarifies hastily, wringing his hands together at her close inspection.  
It makes her laugh, a sound channelled warm and resonant from deep inside her.

"...Right. Thank you."

For the first time today, she lets herself look at him.  
Visibly, he relaxes when he sees the appreciative crinkle at the corner of her eyes.  
They’re going to bake the pie together.  
  
She wonders why she ever pretended like she could turn down anything he asked from her.

“Well, let’s get started on that pie then. I have some gorgeous blueberries in the pantry.”

“I love blueberries.”

Jester’s sure that he’s thinking about more than just fruit. She’d never admit it, but the thought of his mind on her makes her feel giddy, and its almost unbearable in its ridiculousness.

Her thoughts pause when Caleb fixes her with an indiscernible gaze.  
His eyes are soft and intense and everything that makes him _him_ , all at once.

She can’t help but wonder what he sees.

“We’re going to make one that my Mama used to call ‘Lonely Menagerie’ pie. Usually it’s all blackberries, but sometimes she’d put in blueberries instead. They’re my favourite. She... used to call me that, you know? Blueberry.”

“I... understand why.”

Jester snorts at the laconic observation, and feels the rest of the tension leak out of her body.  
She has no willpower when it comes to him. Right then and there, she decides to just take things as they come and worry about the consequences later.

"She made hundreds of different kinds of pie and they had all these silly names."

"Oh, like mother, like daughter."

"Yeah."

Absentmindedly, she turns a round of dough in her hands as she lets herself think.

"She had such dreams for me. She'd be so sad to see how my life turned out."

The words sound sadder now that they’re hanging out in the air between them.

She doesn’t even need to turn her head to know that he’s still looking at her. Listening, too. Jester always finds herself awed by how much Caleb listens to her. He doesn't interrupt or interject too much, he just listens. He listens like what she’s saying really means something.

And though she'll never admit it, she holds this care near and dear to her heart.

Realising that she's been airing out personal thoughts - ones that she’s buried down for _so_ _long_ \- she snaps herself out of it.

"Oh, sorry, I know I'm talking too much."

"No, no. I’m listening."

“Right. My mama... she used to keep me in the kitchen when things got bad. She'd teach me everything she knew about baking. And we'd sing this little song together.”

She hasn’t been able to bring herself to sing the song in so long, but the tune comes back to her as easily as anything.  
She feels like she’s stepped back in time, with her Mama’s hand in hers over the rolling pin.

“Let's make a new one, Mama, what do you say? I love you when you let me pick out the name. Sugar and butter, and flour and mother.”

Caleb accidentally bumps against the island a little, and the hazy, nostalgic trance is broken.

“Seriously. Tell me what the hell you're doing here in some rundown old diner this side of the M27?”  
Her chuckle is warm with fond exasperation, but there's no bite to the words.

“I'm baking a Lonely Menagerie pie,” he retorts plainly.

"That's not what I meant and you know it! Then tell me what you're doing, moving to a small town like this? ...are you really happy here? Oh."

Jester cuts herself off, laughing self-consciously when she realises that that's quite the heavy question to drop on someone. 

"Sorry. You don't have to answer that."

“I'm not used to happy,” he admits softly.  
His brow furrows in a way that makes her want to kiss the crease of stress away from his forehead. She quickly banishes the thought out of her mind.

“Life is alright. You calm me down, you make me feel happy. Needed, even."

Silence settles over them like a blanket as Jester mixes together the berry-laden pie filling.  
This time, it’s peaceful though.

He watches her roll out the dough, hands deft and skilful. It was like watching an artist paint with their eyes closed, how easily it came to her.  
Distractedly, Caleb thinks that perhaps he could find the whole meaning of life in those sad eyes - a map to something greater in every curve and freckle of those two capable hands of hers.

"You're so beautiful.”

“I don't know what you're talking about."

“Pardon me if it’s not my place to say, but life hasn't been as good to you as you deserve, I can see it. I know that it’s not much to offer, but I’ll stay here with you for long as you want me to."

Jester has to blink back the sudden swell of tears rising to her eyes. He'll never cease to surprise her.

“No, that’s a lot to offer, Caleb. And it means the world to me. You know... you matter to me.”

It slips out of her but she wouldn't take it back, even if she could.

The idea of mattering to someone. Something beautiful in its simplicity.  
Simple and plain and not much to ask from somebody, but something she feels they’ve both been sorely lacking.

“You matter to me too, I promise you do.”

Jester lets him softly take her hands and lead her away from the pie, but she does not look up, for now.  
She thinks that it may spell the end of her, if she lets herself succumb to this intoxicating feeling.

It's nothing short of addictive to allow herself to think that... maybe what she says _does_ matter to someone.  
Everything she ever does has been centred around running away from what she can't fix, but right now?

She's considering staying.

Slowly - cautiously - he wraps his arms around her, as if scared she'll push him away or take flight with one wrong move.  
Instead, Jester nestles herself against him.  
She lets her cheek rest against the softness of his sweater and allows herself to sink into his warmth.  
That’s it. Nothing more has to happen. This is enough.

Her mind drifts off to that little life inside of her, and she wishes more than anything that her baby's going to simply drown in this feeling.

'Dear baby?  
I hope someday, somebody wants to hold you for twenty minutes straight.  
They don't pull away, they don't look at your face and they don't even try to kiss you.  
All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight without an ounce of selfishness to it. 

I hope you become addicted, baby.  
I hope you become addicted to saying things and having them matter to someone.'

They don’t have to say it again to know what they’re both thinking.

_You matter to me._

They convey the sentiment in the only way they know how - with gentle adoring touches and the settling calm of comfortable silence.  
Tracing invisible circles into his hand, she leans her forehead against him and lets the rise and fall of her chest fall in sync with his.  
Pie forgotten, they simply mouth silent affirmations of just how much they matter into the warmth of each other.

It's enough.


	17. I Love You Like a Table

It’s the day of Nott and Yeza’s wedding, and things couldn’t be more perfect.

Nott is dressed in an absolutely stunning white wedding dress, while Yeza is clad in a suitably dramatic combination of lengthy coat-tails and a tricorn hat.

Yes, an 18th century, historically-accurate, tricorn hat.  
Well - dubious fashion choices aside - you couldn't claim that the man was anything other than wholly himself, that was for sure.

Anybody with two eyes and beating heart could see how clearly in love they were.

In fact, you wouldn’t even need two eyes to see it, Orly would attest.

And it's not like they're still in the honeymoon stage either.  
It’s how comfortable they are around each other. They click in a way that makes you think of a fiddly piece of rogue circuitry, finally clicking into place, the way it always belonged - perfect.

The two most nervous souls she's ever had the pleasure of meeting have found balance in each other. It's almost poetic, in a way.

An 'It-almost-makes-you-believe-again' pie wouldn't be doing the two of them justice, she thinks.  
If someone had told her that Yeza and Nott's hearts had begun to beat steadily in time with each other’s, she wouldn't argue against them. 

Jester sees the way their similar anxieties bleeds into calm every time they’re around each other.  
That's what really seems to solidify it to her. 

She ignores the way their devotion makes her heart squeeze, settling for nervously smoothing her palms against the stretched fabric of her dress instead.

They've only known each other for... what, 9 months?  
It's a real rush to get married to be sure, but for once in her life, Jester puts aside the cynic in her and lets herself believe. 

When she sees the way they peer into each other's eyes - like they're the only ones in the room... the only thing she _can_ do is believe.

As admittedly disillusioned as she is at the thought of ‘the magical sanctity of marriage’, she finds that if anyone were to reinstill that kind of faith in her, it would be these two.

The ceremony is equal parts ridiculous and heartwarming.

Yeza cuts off the officiant and launches into tearful spontaneous poetry, scrambling up onto diner tables and stools to proclaim his love for her - while Nott scampers off to elaborate on her love for him in a surprise percussion drum-line she rehearsed with a handful of family and friends on both sides. It’s shockingly fun, and though nobody expects it, they wonder if they should’ve.

When the joyous, eccentric couple finally rush back together to where the officiant - who seems nothing less than completely bemused at this point - stands, they crash together in a whirlwind of excitement.

"Promise to do the best we can, say I do and tell you how when I see you... I want to again!"  
"To prove how much I love you, I'll spend every minute trying! I'm not going- I'm happy and I know it!"

Excitedly, they chatter through affection-laden promises that overlap with each other's, eyes never leaving the face of each other.  
It looks like they're the only ones who know what they're saying, but it's so undeniably sweet that nobody really minds.

Eventually, Nott pulls him in for an eager kiss. They're grinning into each other's mouths and it's adorable, if a little awkward - like most everything else about the couple.

Quite frankly, it’s all an absolute mess, but the amount of heart in the whole affair couldn’t be topped by the grandest of celebrations.

It’s a happy reminder to Jester that things often don’t need to go perfectly to be perfect. Flawless is nowhere near as messy and fun and _happy_ as perfect can be.  
Sometimes, you don’t need to stick to the script. All you need is a diner's worth of love.

And although everything is far from a traditional set of vows, the loving couple are light-years away from traditional themselves. 

As quirky as it is, it feels like the perfect way to celebrate their love - like it couldn’t have happened any other way.

The moment they break away from the kiss, they're jumping on the spot together in excitement, hands clasped together like they never want to part.

Jester thinks that it might be the cutest thing she's ever seen in her life.  
Somebody should probably watch that Yeza doesn't slip and throw his back out though.

She winces at the thought of many Yeza-involving, ER-necessitating accidents in months past.  
She barely knows the man, but gods help him, he's probably the most enthusiastically accident-prone man she's ever met.

The very moment the ceremony ends, Jester makes a beeline for the diner kitchen and carts out what she thinks just might be her magnum opus.  
A many-tiered wedding pie that she has fondly dubbed the ‘Livin’ and Lovin’ the Dwendalian Dream’ pie, in honour of the happy, happy, couple.

Each layer of pie is each of the couple’s favourite flavours, complemented by fluffy, homemade whipped cream (served on the side, naturally - so that they can control the ‘whipped-cream-to-pie ratio,’ Jester giggles to herself). 

Carefully, Jester makes sure to tuck every little renewed hope and dream of hers into each little flaky layer of crust, and every loving layer of delicious pie filling. This is going to be the best pie she’s ever made, even if it kills her. They deserve nothing less.

The finishing touch, of course, is a little horse-mounted revolutionary war figurine mounted on top.

She couldn't think of anything better suited to them.

And from the matching screams of joy (actual screams... should she be worried?) from both Nott and Yeza, she feels like she did good.

After hugging each of the two real tight, Jester settles into a quieter patch of the diner and watches fondly as the crowd disperses and settles into joyful wedding clamour.

She lets herself quietly bask in the warm atmosphere, until she hears a low, familiar voice mumble her name.

"You've really outdone yourself this time, Jester. We're betting on you to win that contest next week."

"Thank you so much for letting me go, Yasha."

"I'm not so bad that I'd make you miss it," she responds, averting her eyes and rubbing the back of her neck.

Of course she wouldn't make her miss it. 

Though nowhere near as physically affectionate as Beau and Nott, as well as being a woman of few words, there was no denying the fact that she did care about them all.

"Of course, you're not bad at all," Jester agrees, flashing her an appreciative smile.

The two of them are distracted by a squealing giggle between Yeza and Nott. They're standing off in the corner together, still holding each other in their arms.

As keyed up as they are, there's a relaxed tenderness about their movements that's so incredibly loving that it almost feels strange to observe them, off in their own little joint bubble together.

"Look at them. Happiest day of their lives," Yasha says, the grumble in her voice barely concealing her genuine happiness for the bright-eyed newlyweds.

"Yeah, isn't it? Hm. Can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"Are you happy? Would you consider yourself a happy woman?"

The words are delivered lightly, but it does little to temper the heaviness of the question. Still, she feels that it's something she needs to ask.

"That's a serious question. I think I'm happy enough. I don't give much, I don't get much, but I do try and enjoy whatever comes my way. That's my truth, summed up for your judgement."

Yasha takes a swig from the beer in her hand and it feels like the end of the conversation.

The words ring a little sad, a little lukewarm, but Jester wonders if that's what she has to learn to settle for.

Not happy, but happy enough.


	18. Take It From an Old Man

The wedding party is winding down, and most of the wedding guests have left the diner by now.  
The post-party atmosphere is comfortable in the way that lying side-by-side with your best friend at a sleepover is comfortable.  
It’s the warmth of familiarity you feel when things are calming down, the buzz of the party lessening into a steady hum.

Even when she's not thinking about it, Jester finds that her hands hardly ever leave her stomach. The baby's coming any day now. It seems like she blinked, and now she’s here.  
It’s still hard to think about, sometimes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Even so...

Jester finds a welcome distraction from her pesky, wandering thoughts in Beau, who’s suddenly approaching her with overexaggerated, grandiose flair.  
She’s armed with her familiar half-smile, quirking up the right side of her face, relaxed with light wedding booze.

"May I have this dance, milady?"

Jester takes the hand proffered to her with a light giggle, pulling her friend into a close, gentle sway despite her joking tone.

“Of course, Beau.”

Against her better judgement, Jester had been swept into many a dance that night - though thankfully everybody stayed mindful of her current condition.  
With heavily swollen feet and stomach, she was a far cry from being in a ‘jig-ready’ state. Admittedly, she wasn’t sure if she considered herself much of a jig person in the first place.

And well, a wedding certainly is a special place to learn more about so many different varieties of clog-dancing.  
Before tonight, she didn’t even know there _were_ different varieties of clog-dancing, but Yeza’s family were very intense in separating out the differences between them.

The more you know.

That aside, she knows that things like this come easier to her - when it’s just her and the people she loves, in a place she considers home. She’s had enough of complicated for one lifetime, a little bit of simplicity would do her soul good.

The pleasant silence is broken by Beau. She backs away a little from their slow dancing, though she makes it a point to never let her hand leave Jester’s.  
Her other hand pulls out an unexpected wad of cash.  
"Here. I had some big spenders yesterday, stashed this in the pot. Put it towards your entry fee."

The words are as casual and no-nonsense as the rest of her, but from the look in her eyes, it’s clear that she knows it won’t be such an easy battle won.

"Beau, I can't take your money, especially with what you're dealing with at home."

"Just this once? Come on, make me feel… philanthropic!"

The money is pushed into a small, discreet pocket of hers, but Jester lets it be. She doesn’t have the heart to refuse.

Jester knows that the sound of her voice is thick with tears and gratitude, so she doesn't force herself to speak up.  
Instead, she just loops her arms loosely around Beau's neck and sways.

"No matter what you have going on, I hope you know that I'm in this for life, Jes."

“Me too, Beau. Me too.”

The moment is broken by the sound of shooing. Orly swats lightly at Beau, who raises her hands defensively but relents, breaking away from Jester to head towards the pie trolley.

"Let’s dance. No wedding is complete without a dance, and this is a mighty fine wedding indeed. Reminds me of my third wedding to Sara-Marie. She was a screamer.”

“Orly!” Jester chokes out, mildly scandalised but entirely bemused as they join together in a careful, shuffling dance. “Oh my gods...”

“What? I’m just thinking about her good qualities. Look on the bright side and all that.”

"Oh Lord, maybe I should invent a special pie for you - call it 'Old Orly's Horny Past' pie," she gasps out through breathless peals of laughter.

"You should enter that one to the contest. Wake them old biddies up!"

"Maybe I'll make it just for you," Jester says sweetly, leaning in a little after swiping tears of mirth from the corners of her eyes.

"I’m sorry to say that that’ll have to wait. Doctor says I shouldn’t be eating all this sweet stuff. Liver’s acting up, gotta have a piece of it removed, so it goes. You better promise me you'll bake a win. Jester, you're shaking. You alright?”

“Yeah. It’s just… I don't know what I'm more afraid of - losing or _winning_. Maybe I should just make peace with ‘happy enough’ like my Mama did. I don't know, maybe it's too late for me.”

“Now, don't be running your head with silly ideas like that. Too late for you? There's no such thing. Take it from an old man - time’s just sand slipping past. Even if you try to hold it in your hands, it won’t stay any longer than it wants to.”

Jester can’t help but stare up at him, looking like he's imparting the wisdom of the stars upon her.  
Her eyes never leave his as they dance together, hand in hand. 

“I don’t believe in silver linings, but I do believe in you, Jester. I see that good in you, fighting like a wild thing. Bet it all on yourself, at least one time. And honey, win or lose? It’s one hell of a ride.”

She grins up at him as he speaks; it’s something soft and bittersweet, like the lightest of chocolate mousses. Her eyes are glassy with tears but they go blessedly unacknowledged between the two of them - their little secret.

“If you ever think you can’t, you can - if you lack the strength of your own… hold out your hand, and take it from this old man.”

Jester laughs breathlessly then settles her cheek against his shoulder and lets herself feel truly _safe_ for once in her life. Orly doesn’t go to stop her. He just holds her like he would a daughter and waits for her to be alright.

They just hold each other and enjoy the peaceful silence as the party dies around them.

Happiness is all too fleeting, but fear leaves its imprint eternally.

That’s what she thinks when she sees her husband march into the diner. 

Hell hath no fury like a man scorned, and he looks _livid_.

He grabs her by the arm and pulls her away from Orly, face set in a tight, furious line.

"Excuse me, I need to take my wife home. We have something to talk about," he grits out and suddenly he’s marching up, encroaching her space.  
She’s so much shorter than him.  
She feels cowed. 

Instinctively, Jester backs up a few steps to put some space between them. It won’t save her.

"Who invited you?" Orly bites out, his one good eye burning with something unmistakably lionhearted. That won’t do any good.

“Calm down,” cautions Yasha, taking a step forward to try and mediate the situation.  
  
That’s not going to work, they’re just going to get hurt, she needs to _say_ something-

"You'll just make it worse," she whispers, to her friends - to her real love-forged family. There’s a fake, placatingly blank smile on her face, though it’s more for him than for them. “It’s okay.”

“Let’s go.”

The bride almost trips over her skirts in her haste to get to Jester, Beau hot on her heels.

“Please stay,” Nott sniffs, her voice small and desperate.

“Don’t leave.” Beau’s voice is firm, but it wobbles in a way that’d be imperceptible to anybody else in the world. Jester notices it because she's not just ‘anybody else’ to her two best friends.

“"I'm sorry, Nott, Beau. Bye, sweethearts."

Giving their hands sharp, reassuring squeezes - almost painfully anchoring herself to them momentarily - she summons up the last word like it physically pains her to tear it out of her throat.

“... _congratulations_.”

“I said _we’re going_.”

And with one barked command of his, she’s following like a dog on a tautly yanked leash, watery smile pasted on her face.  
  
There’s nothing else she can do.

  
If he notices the fact that his wife is shaking like a leaf while following in his stead, he doesn’t say a word about it.


	19. She Used to Be Mine

The yelling is unpleasant, but the silence is far worse.

There’s nothing but that damned silence stretching out between them in the small space of the car. It’s too small a space.  
It's too stifling. Jester finds that she can’t breathe, as she tries to desperately suck air into her lungs.  
  
It makes the car ride home nigh unbearable. It feels like she’s spent a miserable eternity in the quiet, with only her husband’s short, tense breaths to keep her in unwilling company. 

There’s nothing she _can_ do, so she just sits up stiffly in her seat - hand on her stomach - and waits. 

The tendons on his hands flex - _tense and relax_ , _tense and relax_ \- as he takes a turn a little too hard. It makes her wince and press a hand to her stomach a little more gently, other hand resting on the seatbelt.

If she looks at him, he’s going to erupt. She knows that much. So she sits and waits in that cursed silence. She doesn’t turn her head, or even try to look at him. She just waits.

He escorts her into the apartment with a firm hand on the small of her back. To anybody else, maybe it’d be a thoughtful gesture, but she can’t read it as anything other than him staking his claim on her.

Too close, he’s _too close_.  
Jester tries to stay as still as she can, but she can't hide a small flinch when he brings a hand up to turn her face towards his, hand under her jawbone. She can feel her racing pulse under the palm of his hand, and hopes desperately that he can't feel her rising panic.

Wrong move.

She stifles a sob as he suddenly grabs her arm and pushes her harshly towards the couch. She doesn’t sit. She just nurses her arm - sure to bruise from the strength of his grip - and keeps her mouth shut.

This anger is different from the one she’s used to around him. It feels deliberate in the way one of his drunken rages never is, and it frightens her real bad. The other shoe has to drop.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t see?”

His voice is surprisingly quiet, dangerous. He doesn’t make any moves to get any closer to her. He just stands and stares at her. Jester can feel his eyes on her, even if she can’t bring herself to meet his gaze.

“Turn over that cushion.”

“No…”  
Her tone isn't petulant, but even so, she doesn’t have the strength to look up at him.

“DO IT!”

He’s so damn _angry_ , and he's advancing on her - so she complies, though every move is reluctant. One step closer, then another, to the centre of the room where the couch sits. Where her fragile hopes and dreams are sitting, tucked into a cushion.

"What is that, Jester?” He pushes her hands away and picks up a wad of cash. His tone is sickly sweet as he crumples it in his fist, but the minute facade breaks when he doesn’t get an answer quickly enough. “ _WHAT IS THAT?_ " 

"Money," she spits out, eyes scrunched up tight against reality.

"It's all over the house, it's in cabinets, it's in drawers, it's in the sofa! _MONEY HIDDEN ALL OVER MY HOUSE!_ ” he screams hoarsely, the whites of his eyes bloodshot with wild, unrestrained fury.

“After everything I’ve done for you, you go and hide _MONEY_ from me! I was the only one there for you when your Mama died and you were surrounded by piss drunk dumbasses- or did you FORGET THAT?!" 

He raises a hand like he wants to hit her so badly, but there’s a flash of something she can’t read in his eyes. Conflict? Realisation? It stops him cold, even as he trembles with rage.

...For once, being heavily pregnant is her saving grace. But she wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place if she weren't pregnant at all.

It’s a split second decision that feels like a lifetime.  
It's the last thing she expects when she sees him turn and beat the hell out of his old guitar in her stead.  
It splinters against the floor. When he finally puts his foot through it, the sound of crunching plywood beneath his boot shatters her.

"Please stop! God, you love that guitar," she rattles out, her hands over her face. God, she can't breathe. She hates that she can never guess what comes next. Who is she kidding, she can’t make heads or tails of him - one minute screaming, the other so, so... quiet.  
She’s never going to be able to make him happy.

Staring down at the shattered instrument, he lets out a shaky breath. Bringing a hand over his face, his voice is small and jagged with emotion. 

"You were the only thing I ever loved. You're the only person who's ever belonged to me. You're my wife. You're my whole life. You hiding this secret from me, it tears me apart... Tell me there's good reason for you to be hiding money away from me. Tell me you were gonna surprise me! Tell me you were gonna buy me a present.” 

He sounds manic in his desperation, getting closer to her.

“I thought you were happy to be my wife. If you… if you were deceiving me, I’d _KILL_ myself," he chokes out, falling to his knees and pressing his face to her stomach. To the baby.  
“I would, I’d die, I would.” 

The words come out in heaving sobs. He breaks down into tears in her arms and she just holds him, like a child, and lets him cry it out.  
His face is ruddy with unsuppressed misery, arms tight around her, fingers sinking into her back. Tears and snot soak through the thin layers of her dress.

She can’t move.

It’s awful when he’s screaming, it’s terrible when he’s raging quiet, but this… this crying… What can she even do but hold him? Nothing is alright, and neither are they. His actions are inexcusable, but when he cries like this she has to remember that he’s hurting too. Everybody is.  
The realisation is too much to hold in her hands.

So instead, she just rocks him in her arms and wishes with all her might that he wasn’t there in them.

“The truth is…” 

The words get stuck in her throat. She repeats them, then struggles against them. The truth… she can’t get the truth out because she’s a coward. That's all she can think of herself as her honesty fails her.

She gives up, the way she always knew she would.

“The truth is… it was for the baby. To buy nice things. I… wanted to save up money for the crib and some toys,” she whispers, in a small, thick voice that doesn’t seem to belong to her.  
Hot tears stream down her face, but she doesn’t feel them.  
She’s not here, she’s somewhere far away from here.

When he finally stops crying in her arms, he pushes away from her and stands up, wiping his face in the crook of his elbow.  
Wordlessly, he moves to tuck the stack of savings into his back pocket. She can’t do anything but stare at where it sat on the coach.  
Its sudden absence is startling in the sharpness of its agony.  
So that’s it, huh?

Running on autopilot, she numbly goes to fix the pillow the way it should be settled against the couch.  
She takes up the broken guitar in her shaking hands, puts it down beside her and sits.

It’s _not_ okay, but if she plays nice and pretends it is… maybe it can be.

He sounds exhausted when he speaks up again. 

“I don’t know why you have to make it so hard, Jester.”

He slams the door behind him as he goes. To drink the money away or to buy a new crib or whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore.

The moment he’s out the door, the dam comes breaking down. She can’t pretend to be fine, she can’t. The numbness is gone, and with it comes startling clarity.

Her sorrow is a silent one. The only sounds in the apartment are her soft, tear-laden gasps for breath. Small, pained sounds catch in her throat, but she forces them back up.

Every suppressed feeling - every twisted arm and demeaning word, every doubt and fear and choked back sob - claws its way out of her. No pretending or hiding this time.

She just weeps, and lets the despair for what might’ve been flood out of her in quiet, breaking sobs.

Her arms come around her stomach and she just holds herself and her baby in the deafening silence of the apartment.

Jester’s sick and tired of the silence. An embittered smile twists its way onto her face as she thinks about all the faces in the glossy pages of that baby book.

“Dear baby, if you ever want to know the story of how we bought your crib, I'll tell you that your crib was bought with the money I was going to use to buy us a new life.  
The Springfield Pie Contest is starting next week. You and I will not be in attendance.”

Jester stares down at herself and lets herself pour her heart out to the baby. She lets out every whispered doubt she’d never dare tell another soul.  
  
That the baby is far from what she asked for, and all the guilt she feels when she thinks she'd give everything up to go back to who she was.  
The way she doesn’t recognise herself anymore when she looks in the mirror.  
And just how far she is from the girl she used to be. She wouldn’t recognise herself as the same person.  
She used to be so carefree; positively brimming with cheerful, mischievous life. What happened?

She knows that she’s a mess of contradictions.

She’s imperfect, but god, does she try. She thinks she’s good, but she lies. Why is she always so hard on herself?  
She’s broken, and won’t ask for help.  
She is messy, but she’s kind.  
  
Even when she’s surrounded by the diner patrons, and all her friends, she has to admit that she feels lonely, most of the time.

The words are quiet. Just between her and her baby. They're all she has left.


	20. Everything Changes

When Jester realises she's truly going into labour, it feels like her world has stopped moving from under her.

She's been told how to tell phantom pains from the real ones - she counts the timing between the contractions with more care than anything she’s ever done before. 

But even if she hadn't... There's an odd kind of gravity in her chest that just tells her that the baby is on its way. 

She just knows.

The ride to the hospital feels like a dream, but the pain is only getting worse. It starts as a dull ache that occasionally sharpens into an acute agony settled deep in the pit of her stomach.

Her husband is so lackadaisical about her misery that she finds herself sorely tempted to smack him upside the head. She probably would've if she thought she’d get away with it.

As it is, she just squeezes her nails into the palms of her hands and tries her best to endure it, tail curling and uncurling around her calf in small, futile self-soothing motions.

\---

When she finally finds herself situated in a hospital bed, there's an odd kind of relief in Jester's chest. But this relief is quickly drowned out by pain - and mild panic building up inside her. 

She never wanted her husband's baby, and the realisation that this is truly happening hits her so suddenly, it leaves her winded.

He's has left to watch a football game in the waiting room. It's like he doesn't even care...  
It's infuriating, but admittedly, it's better than the alternative.  
The last thing she needs in her husband breathing down her neck when she's in as much pain as she is.

Suddenly Caleb is by her side, and she’s grateful for it - even as she grits her teeth against an especially painful extended contraction. She knows that she’s still in the early stages of labour - but the thought of it only getting worse from here makes her despair.

“Jester, everything is going to be okay.”

“Just make it all go away,” she gasps out, eyes squeezed shut.

“Just focus on your breathing, I'm going to be right here.”

"Wheel me in!" 

Jester recognises that slow, accented drawl before she sees the person it belongs to - she welcomes the distraction, ever delighted to see her favourite customer, even at a time like this.

“I'm sorry, do you belong here?”

“Aw, he sure does! Hiya, Orly! You have your surgery today?” 

“Yeah. Beau told me you were here. I bought you this card in the gift shop downstairs. It's silly and a little flowery, it almost gave me diabetes.”

Slowly, he passes the envelope to her. Pink and glittery - and so utterly not-Orly, but very Jester indeed.  
It makes her appreciate the gesture even more so.  
  
“No, don’t look at it now. Look at it later, when all the fuss is over." 

Her husband charges into the hospital room like a bull in a chinashop, destroying Jester’s delicate balance of momentary peace and reprieve from him. 

"Hey, it's halftime in the lounge and the game starts at 10, what's the ETA in here?" 

Her husband stops and notices Orly, who’s staring him down severely with his one good eye. If looks could kill...

“Hey. I'm the father to be.” 

“How could I forget you?” he snorts, voice dripping with the utmost disdain for him.  
“Ah, don't say nothing smart, ya dumbass. Wheel me out.”

And with those colourful words, Orly is quickly wheeled out of the hospital room.

Her husband is eating goddamn chips sitting next to her while she's going through waves of the worst pain she's ever been in in her life. 

...she’s pretty sure she’d throttle him if given half the chance.  
  
Instead, she fumbles through awkward introductions, wide eyes meeting Caleb’s as if imploring him for help.

“Dr. Widogast... uh, this is my husband.”

Jester watches as he pulls out a camcorder (‘to remember the moment’, even though the last thing she wants - sweating and bleeding and in pain - is to be recorded.)  
He shuts down her protests, so she lets it be and just tries to turn her face away.

"It's just me and the wife on the special day." 

He mumbles through a mouthful of chips pointing the camera at Dr. Widogast, like a passing thought.

"Say something, doc." 

"Um... hello." 

"Don't quit your dayjob." 

Another contraction hits, and she vocalises her discomfort out in a low, loud groan, gripping the side of the hospital bed like it’s her personal lifeline. 

"So dramatic,” he teases. “And hey, stop spitting on the lens.” 

You’d think he was taking her grocery shopping instead of giving birth to his child, from the way he’s acting.  
The rising urge to kill is rising up within her with every quip, and every loud, open-mouthed crunch of his chips.

Instead of committing what she thinks would be a very justifiable murder, she just focuses on her breathing. Well, she does when she realises that she’s been holding her breath for the past minute. What was it they said? In for 4, hold for 7, out for 8…

"Everything is going to be alright, Jester, just take my hand." 

"Okay." 

Without thinking, she slips her hand into Caleb’s and squeezes hard. He flushes a little at the slip up.

"Oh! I mean, take his hand."

"What?" 

"I mean, j- uh- just, I need you to rest up. The big moment is coming. I will let the two of you have your privacy." 

“Wait! Dr. Widogast? I need us to be clear on one thing. I want drugs. I want massive amounts of drugs. I want the maximum legal limit of drugs." 

Reasonably unshaken by her intensity - likely having seen it many times before by other pregnant women in pain - he nods.

"...Noted and understood."

She doesn’t want to let go of his hand, but she does.

\---

They don’t show what childbirth is really like in the TV shows.

It’s messy and awful and the worst Jester has ever felt in her entire life. 

Time blurs into a haze of agony. Minutes could have passed, eternities could have passed. At this point, she’s not sure. 

Thank the gods for modern medicine and pain relief.

\---

When it's all over, Jester lies back against the hospital bed and doesn't move. Distantly, she hears a loud cry, and then the voice of Nurse Keg, calling out her name.

"Would you like to hold your baby, Mrs. Lavorre? Did you hear me? Are you okay, Mrs. Lavorre?" 

Hazily, she feels like it takes her hours to respond. She wonders if she shuts her eyes tight enough, if everything will just go away.

"Yeah, I'm okay," she says, exhaustedly. She barely even notices that her baby is being passed to her until she's settled in her arms.  
She looks down at the little bundle in her arms, and it's like the world falls out from under her feet.

She hates to be a living cliche, but god, when she looks down at that baby, suddenly... nothing else matters. 

It’s the most powerful feeling she’s ever felt. It knocks the wind out of her lungs. All she can feel is wonder. 

Her eyes never move from her. This little baby, she made this little human.

Jester may still be groggy from the effects of the epidural, but everything she feels is aching, crystal-clear. Her baby. 

Her eyes are watery and her hands are shaking. She's just overwhelmed, but she thinks she wouldn't want it any other way.

She’s too transfixed by her daughter to pay attention to anybody else around her. It's just her and the baby.

She... looks like a tiny wrinkly alien, but she’s the most perfect little person Jester’s ever seen in her life. The tiniest fingers and tiniest toes, and her eyes have opened and are peering around the room.

She knows that they’re not really seeing anything yet, but god, staring into them...

A happy sob nearly rises up in her throat and threatens to choke her.

A wave of something indescribable hits her like a wave breaking over the shore. A kind of awe the likes of which she’s never felt. 

She's not going to let anything happen to this little baby of her's. Everything she went through, the heartache and suffering she had to endure...

No longer. 

No way in hell is she going to let any of what happened to her happen to her little baby girl. She'd die for her, she'd kill for her.   
Everything she's ever felt before now pales in comparison to what she feels looking down at her little girl’s face, still swaddled up in the hospital's blanket.   
Thickly, Jester swallows down tears.

"Now remember what you said. Don't go loving that baby more than you love me."

It's only the gruff voice of her husband that snaps her out of her reverie.

His tone is threatening, but every ounce of fear she's ever felt towards him has drained out of her. It's replaced with roaring protective instinct, clawing and screaming to be released from the confines of her chest. She feels lionhearted.

Words that have gone long unsaid rise up in her like a deep, dormant instinct, hoarse and solid and honest. She can't stop them, and she can't believe herself - but she couldn't hold them back if she wanted to. She does not want to.

She was so afraid of him before, but she’s not afraid anymore.

Maybe she couldn’t stand up for herself, but the sheer thought of her daughter coming to harm under the hand of this piss-poor excuse of a father and she sees red.

"I don't belong to you. I never die. And I don't love you anymore. I haven't in a very long time," she whispers - and its like her heart has been set free. All that misery, all that despair… It means nothing now.

Every time she looks down at her daughter, she feels a renewed fire lit within her. One she thought was snuffed out a long time ago. It makes her want to fight.

"I want a divorce."

The words are finally out there. It’s like she hears music in her head, though it might just be the blood rushing behind her temples.

"That's not funny." 

His tone is light, but there's a growing sense of danger in his voice - almost like he’s giving her a chance to back out of the taunt.  
When she holds her baby firmly to her chest, it doesn't even matter. Let him try to scare her. She can’t find it in herself to care. Not anymore.

"Nobody’s laughing. I want you out of my life."

"You can’t leave me!"

"Watch me."

"You're going to regret this when we get home-"

"No! You're going to regret ever saying that! Because if you come within 6 yards of us, I will flatten your sorry ass, and I will enjoy doing it!"

There isn't even a quiver in her voice. 

She stands steadfast in her resolve, unwavering, tearing her eyes away from her baby only to stare him dead in the eye, the way she wishes she always had.

"Now get out of this room before I call someone in to carry you out," she spits out, voice dripping with venom.

Every doubt he's ever fed her has turned into burning, righteous fury. There is still fight left in her. 

She's shaking, but she's never been more sure of anything in her life. Every time she looks down at her little girl, it grounds her. She has to protect this baby, or die trying. 

Nothing's going to harm her. Least of all scummy drunkards. She’s putting her foot down.

It ends here and now.

Jester’s always _been_ strong.  
All it took was some help from the smallest, newest love of her life to bring it out of her.

The sound of her husband cursing at her - and consequently getting firmly escorted out of the hospital - barely makes a dent in her happiness.  
Jester's filled to bursting with it, smiling down at her pride and joy.

This is her fresh start. She's found it in the eyes of the tiny little tiefling she has cradled to her chest.

Her baby, her love - oh Traveler, she’d do anything for this little one.

“We’re gonna be happy,” she whispers, like she’s sharing the most important secret of her life between them. “Not just happy enough, but really happy.”

It takes her an age, but she finally looks away from her baby long enough for her to let a nurse call her two best friends in from the waiting room.

“Baby girl, meet your godmothers.” 

Nott squeals, then claps a hand over her mouth.  
But still, there’s no doubt that she’s gaping in awe behind her hand.  
  
Beau's reaction is more subdued, but the shine of happiness in both their eyes is all she needs to know how delighted they both are.

Jester’s on cloud 9, but she drifts away from her two friends slightly when she sees Caleb walk into the hospital room.  
Fixing them with a meaningful look, it doesn’t take long for them to hurry out when they realise what she wants - to be alone with the doctor for a second.

They’re alone. The air is quiet, but in a peaceful sort of way.  
Even so, she breaks the silence between them with a happy sigh.

“Ever seen a baby this beautiful? I'm calling her Lulu.”

“Out of the 341 I've delivered, between us, she's definitely the most beautiful. And that's a beautiful name for her.”

He smiles down at her baby. It’s a small twitch of his lips - but something so blessedly real. It warms her to the depths of her heart.

“I know what you're thinking. That's a lie, what are you thinking?”

“I am thinking that there is nothing that I can do to thank you for all you've done for me.”

Near the end of her term, they weren’t intimate together the way that they had been.  
All they did was hold each other and talk - talk about their lives, or their dreams, or about nothing in particular at all.  
  
Caleb had let her cry on his shoulder and expected nothing back.

It's hard for her to fathom a man doing something so selflessly for her - without a price attached to it sometimes.  
  
So she shows her thanks in the best way - the only way - she knows how to bear her heart to a person. With baked goods.

“You deserve homemade, but... you try telling that to a vending machine.”

Jester produces a plastic-wrapped blueberry muffin from the hospital vending machine, offering it with an almost shy, hopeful smile.

“Here. 'Thanks for making me feel less blue' blueberry muffin," she chuckles, something in her eyes tired, but unmistakably warm.  
She’s the happiest she’s ever felt, and it shows on her face. She’s... glowing.

“How about this. I get a new gynaecologist, and we work on being friends - proper friends, no guilt, no worry, no sneaking around - for a bit. How’s that sound?” 

“...I think that sounds good to me.”

They split the muffin and hope for a better future together.

\---

Sitting on the guest room bed of Yeza and Nott’s home, she pulls out the envelope Orly got for her.  
In all the hustle and bustle of the birth, she nearly forgot about it.

“To my only friend,” she starts, reading the letter out loud with a fond, smiley crinkle to her eye. “Start fresh. I'm leaving you the pie shop. Name a pie for me when I'm gone.”

The words unfurl to her like a bittersweet shock in her mind. Her jaw drops open, and she keeps on tracing every carefully inked letter, like the words'll disappear if she's not careful enough. But there they remain.

_Oh, Orly…_

A new start.  
A new life, in front of her face.  
Happiness, there for the taking.

And take it, she does - being surrounded by people who love her so - she knows she won't be alone when she does it.


	21. Find My Right Place (Lulu's Pies)

Jester gets a new gynaecologist right after Lulu’s birth.

It’s startlingly easy to rearrange.

She supposes that it’s what she should have done in the first place, but she can’t find it in her to regret her mistakes.

As messy as it all was, she can't imagine heading down any other path - and she really can’t imagine any other situation where she didn't end up this blessedly happy.

\---

Jester smiles contentedly at the chalkboard - and the special pie written on it today.

_Old Orly’s ‘Slice of Heaven’ pie._ _  
__Nilla-wafer crumb crust, packed down firmly to create a strong foundation, then piled high with heavenly peaks of light, fluffy coconut cream. Top with a sky-high tower of sweet, flaky coconut._

_...with a tomato on the side, on its own plate_ , her mind prompts. She chuckles lightly to herself at the memory.

_‘Orly. I wish you were here. Thank you so much for leaving me the diner - you gave me a turn in life for the better with it. I wish you got to meet Lulu. I think she would’ve really loved you.’_

Jester tosses her thoughts up to the sky, and hopes he catches them.  
She wonders if maybe - wherever he happens to be - if he’s enjoying a slice of pie right now too.

Fondly, she watches all her closest friends talk to Lulu sweetly up at the diner counter, catching the tail-end of their conversation.

“...and that’s the key to a perfect pancake - but you have to keep that to yourself, okay?”

Yasha tells her this like she's sharing the secrets of the universe, instead of a pancake recipe.

“Ooh, can I get chocolate chips in mine?” Yeza gasps, clasping his hands together excitedly, eyes lighting up at the prospect.  
He is quickly shut down by Yasha.

“No,” she responds bluntly, though her tone is softened with an edge of teasing. “You see what I deal with here, Lulu?”

“Lulu here gets chocolate chips if she wants them though, right?” Beau asks, her arms folded across her chest, but with a wide, lazy smile on her face.

“Certainly.”

Yeza’s high spirits are not deterred for long as he scrambles onto the counter beside Lulu. (A long-suffering sigh from Yasha serves as his only resistance.)

Lightly, he taps out a song - with warbling, operatic vocals to match - on the kitchen counter with a pair of spatulas, making the kid giggle wildly.  
Nott joins in with pitchy almost-harmonies, encouraging Lulu to sing along with them.

Putting her down from the counter she’s sitting up on, Yasha playfully swings the kid around a few times - a truly happy smile on her face for once.  
The moment she touches the ground, she spots her mother and makes a pleased beeline for her.

“Hi, Mama!”

“Hiya, baby!”

Jester presses a kiss to her little Lulu’s forehead when she runs over, scooping her up and settling her against her hip.

These are her people, and this diner is her home.

They say it takes a village to raise a child.  
Well, maybe it takes a diner full of the most loving people she’s ever met to make up a family.

\---

The sky's blue and the grass is green. The sun smiles down on her garden, bathing everything it touches in its warm, golden glow. 

The day is nothing short of picture-perfect.

Jester watches her daughter run around the garden barefoot with wild, unrestrained affection - chuckling at the sight of her with their patient, long-suffering pet kittycat in her arms.

“Maybe you should give Frumpkin a break now," she calls out the patio window bemusedly, arms folded lightly across her chest.

"Aww, no! He's fine- look, he's having fun!" Lulu twiddles his paws gently to reinforce her point. "See, he's dancing."

"Right. How about this. I think you’re old enough now, sweetie. So... what if I teach you to bake your first pie today, all on your own? Does that sound good?”

“What, really?! YESSSSSSSSSS!” 

The little girl - who's the spitting image of Jester herself - raises her arms to the sky in triumph, whooping excitedly. Her tail whizzes behind her so quickly, it's almost a blur.

"Come in and wash your hands then, we'll get started! Quick- before I gobble up all the strawberries!"

She hears a squeaky, offended gasp at the mock-threat and it's almost enough to make her burst into another fit of giggles.

"You wouldn't dare!"

The quick, pitter-patter of small feet scrambling to the kitchen soon reaches her ears. Just in case she _does_ dare...

\---

It doesn't take long for them to fall into rhythm, the way they've done time and time before.  
The soothing lull of Jester's singing washes over the kitchen as they start to sing their favourite family pie song together. Her warm, melodic voice echoes an eager, squeakier one.

If she focuses, Jester thinks that she can almost hear the entrancing sound of her mom's warm harmonies on top of them. The thought makes her smile.

“Let’s make a new one, mama, what do you say?”

"What do I say?"

"I love you when you let me pick out the name!”

Her heart softens in the way it always does when she hears her baby say that she loves her.

“I love you, you can pick out the name.”

It seems like just yesterday Lulu was the tiniest bundle in her arms. She blinks, and Lulu’s 6 already. She’s gotten so big...  
Never mind the fact she’s getting bigger everyday, she’ll always be her little ray of gods-given sunshine to Jester.

Jester stops to boop Lulu on the nose and grin, taking her up in her arms and plopping her onto the kitchen step stool.

“I think today we’ll start with strawberry cream…”

The tiny tiefling handles the ingredients decisively, tongue stuck out in faux-concentration.

“...I’m calling this one Lulu’s strawberry dream.”

“Sugar and butter, flour and mother,” Jester sings, her voice acting as a loving guide - as familiar as the dog-eared pages of your favourite old recipe book.

It doesn't take long at all for them to put the pie together.   
And aside from a little verbal instruction from Jester ("Scrape out the cream, mhm ... don't stretch the dough too much - yay! You got it!") - Lulu does it all by herself.

She’s a natural. Pride shines out of that adorable toothy grin - Jester can’t help herself from giving her an affectionate little pinch on the cheek, the way her Mama always used to do.

Wiping a smudge of flour off her nose, Jester carefully pops the pie into their preheated oven.

_Sugar, butter, flour._

She hears her lovely husband’s voice - Zemnian-accented and happy as a clam - ring out from the other room.

“Do you need any help?”

“No, we’re doing fine, Cayleb, but thank you for the offer!”

Even at her dismissal, Jester knows when Caleb's crept into their kitchen.  
She feigns surprise when she feels his arms loop over their shoulders, but she can't hide her growing smile, leaning into the hug.

“Do you think the baby’s gonna like strawberry pie like I do?” Lulu asks suddenly, leaning in close to inspect Jester’s growing tummy, staring up curiously at the two of them.

“I think the baby will like strawberry pie just fine, sweetie.”

"I'm sure the baby will love strawberry pie? But you know what I think they'll really love? You!"

Caleb smiles, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of Lulu's head, scooping her up in his arms, holding up in the air and relishing in her squeals of delight.

"I'm flying! Look, mama, I'm _flying!"_

Jester may be pregnant for the second time in her life, but this time it's the furthest thing from the teary, drama-filled affair it was so many years ago. Now it's just simple.  
Watching the two of them play around, illuminated by rays of summer sunshine filtering through the kitchen windows... she finds that she couldn’t wish for anything more.  
  
She's finally gotten to her sugary-sweet happy ending. 

She couldn’t be happier if she tried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we've reached the end - and gotten to our happy, happy epilogue!  
> Thank you so much for reading and coming along with me on this journey!  
> I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you all had even half as much fun reading it! :)
> 
> Yet again, thank you so much for your continued support! I love you all! <3 <3 <3


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